Re: What's cooking in git.git (Nov 2008, #06; Wed, 26)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 29, 2008, 00:13 UTC
Message-ID: <7voczz4cfb.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20081128192033.GF23984@spearce.org>

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> ...
>> In other words, unless there is more interest in that feature, enough to 
>> generate a well-understood design before a good implementation, I'd rather 
>> see this patch series dropped.
>
> Ack.  I agree with every remark made by Dscho, and also want to cry "wolf".
>
> I haven't had time to read the patch series.  Its big and intrusive
> and I just don't need the feature.

Well, "me neither". Although I personally think resisting changes until it becomes absolutely necessary is a good discipline, we also need to recognise that there is a chicken-and-egg problem. When you have a potentially useful feature, unless people actually try using it in the field, you won't discover the drawbacks in either the design nor the implementation, let alone any improvements.

> But I feel like if it were in fact merged I'll fall over some bug
> in it sometime soon and be forced to stop and debug it.

Exactly.  That is how you make progress.

Having said that, I am willing to carry it over in 'next' outside 'master' for the 1.6.1 cycle, as three people who are most likely to be able to fix any potential issues are not using that feature.

> Heck at
> the least I'll have to go back to JGit's index code and implement
> the new file format.

I am sorry to dissapoint you but I am planning to use the first one in the series, which is the one that adds extended index flag bits, for the fix to an unrelated feature.