Re: [PATCH 04/10] refs/files: support symbolic and root refs in initial transaction

From: karthik nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 11, 2024, 10:42 UTC
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZSKH_OY5XG+toFUT2fD+6c7fshNZDfcOOSydxH23D91Zg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20241108-pks-refs-optimize-migrations-v1-4-7fd37fa80e35@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> The "files" backend has implemented special logic when committing
> the first transactions in an otherwise empty ref store: instead of
> writing all refs as separate loose files, it instead knows to write them
> all into a "packed-refs" file directly. This is significantly more
> efficient than having to write each of the refs as separate "loose" ref.
>
> The only user of this optimization is git-clone(1), which only uses this
> mechanism to write regular refs. Consequently, the implementation does
> not know how to handle both symbolic and root refs. While fine in the
> context of git-clone(1), this keeps us from using the mechanism in more
> cases.
>
> Adapt the logic to also support symbolic and root refs by using a second
> transaction that we use for all of the refs that need to be written as
> loose refs.
>

The patch looks good. I was wondering if another way would be to just add symref and root ref support to packed-refs. But that might be a bigger undertaking than what we're doing here.

But thinking about it, seems like we can do that in a backwards compatible way too.

The changes in this patch look good.

[snip]