Re: Adding files to a git-archive when it is generated, and whats the best way to find out what branch a commit is on?

From: René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Date: Aug 4, 2009, 17:50 UTC
Message-ID: <4A7874CC.9050702@lsrfire.ath.cx>
In-Reply-To: <9b18b3110908020719h79cf4872p9f284346cd6a185b@mail.gmail.com>

demerphq schrieb:

Show 15 quoted lines

> One solution is to do the work in a process specific temporary
> directory with the correct name and then add it that way.
> 
> A slightly nicer approach is create the file in a common working
> directory with a temporary name and then have it added to the archive
> with a different name. This is actually the approach I used by
> exploiting the the --transform option to tar. So while it might appear
> my request is a YAGNI it is actually a IADNI (I Already Did Need It).
> 
> Even nicer and cleaner of course would be support something like
> "--add-file -=.patch"  with the "-" meaning "read from STDIN", which
> then means temporary files can be avoided, assuming one only needs to
> add a single file to the archive. This is particularly nice if the
> content of  the file can be generated from the output of something
> like git-describe or git rev-parse or any generic tool.

This case (single file in archive, contents from stdin) could be handled by another option, e.g. named --add-stdin <name_in_archive>, without resorting to multi-valued option parameters.

Also, if a file can be generated using a --pretty=format: string, then you can let git-archive expand a checked-in template by setting the attribute export-subst. This works for multiple files, but doesn't if you need git-describe style output (yet).

> So IMO actually this functionality would be very useful, and isnt so
> weird when you think of it in context of generating snapshots for a
> "git aware" build process.

No doubt about it. The question is: how to expose such functionality? Perhaps all that is needed for your purposes is a format place-holder for git-describe output?

(git itself needs more: in addition to the files "version" and "git.spec", which could benefit from such a place-holder, it adds the generated "configure" script and "git-gui/version" to the tarball.)

René