Re: [PATCH] rev-list: add "--full-objects" flag.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Jul 8, 2005, 01:46 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0507071841010.25104@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vvf3mds9c.fsf_-_@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Thu, 7 Jul 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>
> When --full-objects is specified instead of usual "--objects",
> rev-list shows all objects reachable from trees associated with
> the commits in its output.  This can be used to ensure that a
> single pack can be used to recreate the tree associated with
> every commit in it.

Hmm.. The more I think about it, the less I think this is about "full objects".

After all, we won't have all objects: the pack will still cut off any commits that may be reachable but not interesting.

So this is more specifically about full _trees_, not objects per se. So while the name of the option doesn't really matter all that much, I do think it would make more sense as "--whole-trees" or something like that.

However, I really don't think it's a very useful option in the first place. Any dumb web-based thing that depends on "--whole-trees" would suck horribly. For the kernel, it means that you'd be guaranteed 17,000+ files, and there would be very few deltas in there, so you'd have this 40MB+ pack-file. Which is _not_ an acceptable way of getting updates.

		Linus