Re: [RFC/WIP] Pluggable reference backends

From: Max Horn <max@quendi.de>
Date: Mar 10, 2014, 15:51 UTC
Message-ID: <84EEAF2D-BCEA-4D02-95BE-31E9C518A0BC@quendi.de>
In-Reply-To: <CAJo=hJtiPgByhk9M4ZKD98DARzgeU6z2mmw7fcLTEbBza-_h6A@mail.gmail.com>

On 10.03.2014, at 15:30, Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:

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> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 4:00 AM, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> I have started working on pluggable ref backends.  In this email I
>> would like to share my plans and solicit feedback.
> 
> Yay!

Yay, too!

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> JGit already has pluggable ref backends, so it is good to see this
> starting in git-core.
> 
> FWIW the Gerrit Code Review community is interested in this project.
> 
>> * Store references in a SQLite database, to get correct transaction
>>  handling.
> 
> No to SQLLite in git-core. Using it from JGit requires building
> SQLLite and a JNI wrapper, which makes JGit significantly less
> portable. I know SQLLite is pretty amazing, but implementing
> compatibility with it from JGit will be a big nightmare for us.

I understood this as an example (indeed, it is listed under "Wile new ideas"), not a proposal to put this into the git core. It might be an interesting experiment in any case, and if the proposed modularity is truly achieved, it could (if there was any interest in it, that is) be implemented in an external 3rd party project.

Anyway, I am quite excited about this project. Usually, I am quite skeptical about such large scope ideas ("Yeah, cool idea, but who will pull it off, and with which resources?"). But this one seems to have a good chance of being implemented gradually and inside the main repository, with the help of "feature flags".

Thus, I am looking forward to Michael's announced initial patch series. I feel that I don't know enough yet about git overall to be of much help on my own at this point. But perhaps over time some mini- or micro-projects pop up were others can help (e.g. "adapt these 50 tests to work with the 'quagga' ref"); if they are pointed out (assuming that doing so isn't more work than just addressing them yourself ;-), I am willing to help out.

Cheers, Max