Re: Sources for 3.18-rc1 not uploaded

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Oct 20, 2014, 23:17 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+55aFyZ1Mzjdx+JsD4jmFnJo+xL8xLz5+mtbh+_25bCak-7hQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20141020222809.GB223410@vauxhall.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 3:28 PM, brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

>
> It doesn't appear that the stability of git archive --format=tar is
> documented anywhere.  Given that, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect
> that any tar implementation produces bit-for-bit compatible output
> between versions.

The kernel has simple stability rules: if it breaks users, it gets fixed or reverted. That is a damn good rule.

I realize that some other projects are crap, and don't care about their users. I hope and believe that git is not in that sad group.

The whole "it's not documented" excuse is pure and utter bollocks. Users don't care. And stability of data should be *expected*, not need some random documentation entry to make it explicit.

                      Linus