Re: Millisecond precision in timestamps?

Steven Michalske <smichalske@gmail.com> writes:

My answer to the question is that it is harmful to the data model, but the benefit of going against the data model _may_ outweigh the downside. It is all relative.

The first of very small number of principles of the git data model is that the object name is derived solely from the contents, hence we can tell two different things apart with object names without looking at object contents.

This is actively broken by adding "junk" fields left and right. Adding arbitrary pieces of data that are optional (and largely ignored by core operations) means you can record objects with essentially the same contents under different object names, so object names no longer help us telling two moral-equivalent objects apart.

But "if two objects have different names, they are not the same" does not have to be the only and the absolute truth in all contexts; the world is not so black and white. Depending on the application and the context, you may want to treat two things that are not the same as equivalents.

For example, at the blob level, two blob objects that store the same text (say, one original and the other typed in double-space) would be different objects and have different object names, but you may want to treat them as "equivalents" (not same but interchangeable), by applying textconv filter to normalize their contents when comparing them. We still keep the "two objects with different names are different" principle, but at the same time, allow users to treat them as equivalent in specific contexts.

Introducing a hack to exclude selective "junk" fields from hashing done for object name computation is not a solution and is out of the question, but that does not necessarily mean that commit objects should never be extended with new types of header fields. When a commit object is made with a "junk" field, it will have a name that is different from the one it would get without the "junk" field, but the benefit of the ability to store extra data _may_ outweigh the downside of having to always compare the contents of two objects with different names to find out that they are different but equivalent.