Re: removing content from git history

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Feb 21, 2007, 21:11 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702211306520.4043@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070221210045.GB26525@spearce.org>

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 
> One idea Junio and I kicked around on #git a short while ago
> was to arrange for a pipe between the current Git process
> and git-fast-import, where the pipe was used from within
> write_sha1_file() rather than creating the loose object.

The probnlem there is that most conversion scripts that use "write_sha1_file()" will want to *read* that file later. If git-fast-import hasn't generated the pack yet (because it's still waiting for more data), that will not work at all.

So then you basically force the conversion script to keep remembering all the old object data (using something like pretend_sha1_file), or you limit it to things that just always re-write the whole object and never need any old object references that they might have written.

A lot of conversions tend to be incremental, ie they will depend on the data they converted previously.

			Linus