From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:53:59 GMT
Subject: Re: Configurable callbacks for missing objects (we Re: upload-pack: support subtree packing)
Message-ID: <AANLkTimrp4z0n75Zq7BtTvdWz6nzK3M4J9ohdbE6X3t3@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100727185127.GD25124@worldvisions.ca>

2010/7/27 Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>:
> But I've been thinking that a really elegant way to solve the problem could
> be to have a user-configurable "get the missing objects" callback.  If any
> part of git that *needs* an object can't find it, it calls this callback to
> go try to retrieve it (either just that one object, or it can request to
> download the object recursively, ie. everything it points to).
>
> Then shallow clones could just auto-fill themselves if you really need a
> prior version, for example.

What counts as "needing" an object?  Does 'git log -Sfoo' or 'git log
--stat' need all missing blobs?  I'd personally dislike having such
commands automatically result in huge downloads, but I'd probably
dislike the automatic downloading in general so perhaps I'm just a
misfit for the lazy clone usecase.  It's still an interesting question
though -- what counts as needed?