From: Nicolas Pitre Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2006 17:32:47 GMT Subject: Re: A look at some alternative PACK file encodings Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20060907090756.30111.qmail@science.horizon.com> On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, linux@horizon.com wrote: > > Support for 'thin' packs would pretty much require mixing IDs and > > (relative) offsets in the same pack file. > > An alternative would be to create a small "placeholder" object that > just gives an ID, then refer to it by offset. > > That would avoid the need for an id/offset bit with every offset, > and possibly save more space if the same object was referenced > multiple times. Well... I'm using object type 6 for deltas with offset reference (instead of object type 7 that is delta with sha1 reference). So there is no extra bit needed and no backward compatibility breakage. There could be of course a new object type which payload is only a sha1 that deltas type 6 reference. But that can be introduced at a later date if it turns out to be worthwhile (i.e. the actual saving in real use scenarios is worth the (small but still) added complexity). > And it just seems simpler. Well I would not say so. Simply prefixing a delta with the sha1 of its base object cannot be simpler when streaming out a pack. Nicolas