From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:29:24 GMT
Subject: Re: Remote git-describe ?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0701241227490.22628@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <38b2ab8a0701240313w64c2df57w2542b63eba2294e0@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Francis Moreau wrote:

> On 1/24/07, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Francis Moreau wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm looking for a command that would give the same output than 'git
> > > describe' but on a remote server.
> > >
> > > Is this possible ?
> > 
> > It would be possible; at a high cost (especially on the remote server):
> > You definitely need _all_ commits between the commit you want to describe
> > and the tag it eventually finds, and possibly all other commits, too.
> > 
> > So it boils down to fetching all commit objects. It is much cheaper, and
> > more efficient, to just fetch the repo and do it locally.
> > 
> 
> really ? Givinig that I would use it to describe the HEAD of the kernel 
> repo:
> 
>        $ git describe --remote=<git-server> HEAD
> 
> this would make the server parse all commits between HEAD and the 
> closest tag which seems to me a lot cheaper than downloading the whole 
> repo...

The problem is that you don't know which tag is closest. You _have_ to 
walk the ancestry to find out.

Besides, it has been determined that the commit objects _alone_ make up 
quite a substantial part of the repo, so downloading them _is_ similar to 
downloading the whole repo.

Ciao,
Dscho