Re: Enhancements to git-protocoll

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 30, 2012, 01:28 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr4rut4u9.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAMK1S_geKq5DkNAy2wxGt5EmoOesxaSKKuQjVaQVcbRVdR+9gA@mail.gmail.com>

Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> As I may have said earlier, this interaction is far too site-specific
> to be rolled into git itself.
>
> How about a new hook instead?  A pre-pack-protocol hook that acts as
> if it was called by the remote user as a command, and if it exit's
> with 0, then the real pack protocol starts else it gets aborted.  Let
> him do whatever he wants in there.  Arguments to the hook will be repo
> name and command (git-upload-pack mainly).

Not very interested. If it is _known_ to happen before Git protocol proper happens, why not give the user something like the gitolite command "D", that is interpreted by gitolite-shell without bothering Git at all?

After all, at least you and I share the understanding that once the conversation in Git protocol proper starts, there is no place for such a random hook to affect further behaviour of the protocol, so the approach "hook" can only solve narrow "before gitolite-shell (or git-shell or whatever-shell) decides it is time to call Git" cases, and the only way it can affect the outcome of the main conversation is to abort it without graceful degradation, or let the main conversation continue as if nothing happened. I think we agree between us that "a new hook", while it may be _a_ way to do something new, is _not_ a good way to do so. Why add such a wart?

> And even then, all we are doing is rolling into git something that he
> can very easily do outside right now on his own environment ...

Yes, that is a repeat of what you told him already, to which I said "thanks for sanity", I think ;-).

I am not opposed to protocol enhancements, but a new feature that has to change what either end does should be added properly at the protocol level as a protocol capability, not added out of band with band-aid, leaving the main conversation oblivious to what is going on ouside.