From: Johannes Schindelin Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 07:56:17 GMT Subject: Re: Huge win, compressing a window of delta runs as a unit Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20060817040719.GC18500@spearce.org> Hi, On Thu, 17 Aug 2006, Shawn Pearce wrote: > Jon Smirl wrote: > > > > One entry per delta - 845,42,0150 > > Packed deltas - 295,018,474 > > 65% smaller Impressed. > Unfortunately I can't think of a way to make this type of pack > readable by older software. So this could be creating a pretty > big change in the pack format, relatively speaking. :) Not necessarily: the format could stay the same, where multiple object names point to the same entry. It should not be a problem, as long as this change is kept local: the same git tools which created this kind of pack have to read it. However, I see some real problems when a public repository has a pack like this: if the client is older, the server has to do some real work, especially in the case of a fresh clone. It gets even worse with a public HTTP repo. The obvious short-time solution would be to make this opt-in, and use it only on private repositories. Then, one could think about how to handle the delta-chains in the pack protocol (it should be easy, since you just have to store one object instead of a few), and make this a "supports" option. Ciao, Dscho