Re: Incremental use of fast-import may cause conflicting notes

> Hi.
>
> Background: I have an incremental repository-walker creating a corresponding 
> documentation repository from a source repository
> that uses git-notes to store its state, a use for which notes
> seem very suitable.
>
> Problem: When the number of notes in the root of the notes branch
> increases beyond a threshold, fast-import changes the fanout. This is as 
> designed, but the problem is that when fast-import is restarted
> it won't remember the fanout, and will start writing files in the root again. 
> This means that there may be multiple notes-files for the same commit, eg 
> both de/adbeef and deadbeef.
>
> This is not what the user expects, and is not good practice, even if it in 
> this case actually works, since the latter is defined to have priority.
> I'm however not sure if eg fast_import.c:do_change_note_fanout() will do the 
> right thing if/when the fanout is changed again.
>
> The problem is probably due to b->num_notes not being initialized properly 
> when the old non-empty root commit for the notes branch is loaded in 
> parse_from()/parse_new_commit().
>
> My workaround for now is to use filedeleteall and restore all the notes
> by hand in the first new commit on the notes branch.
>
> Version of git: 1.7.6.4 (gentoo)