Re: Smart fetch via HTTP?

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: May 17, 2007, 00:52 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705170152470.6410@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <46a038f90705161426n3b928086t2d3e68749557f866@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Thu, 17 May 2007, Martin Langhoff wrote:

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> On 5/16/07, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 May 2007, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> > > Do the indexes have enough info to use them with http ranges? It'd be
> > > chunkier than a smart protocol, but it'd still work with dumb servers.
> > It would not be really performant, would it? Besides, not all Web servers
> > speak HTTP/1.1...
> 
> Performant compared to downloading a huge packfile to get 10% of it?
> Sure! It'd probably take a few trips, and you'd end up fetching 20% of
> the file, still better than 100%.

Don't forget that those 10% probably do not do you the favour to be in large chunks. Chances are that _every_ _single_ wanted object is separate from the others.

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> > Besides, not all Web servers speak HTTP/1.1...
> 
> Are there any interesting webservers out there that don't? Hand-rolled 
> purpose-built webservers often don't but those don't serve files, they 
> serve web apps. When it comes to serving files, any webserver that is 
> supported (security-wise) these days is HTTP/1.1.
> 
> And for services like SF.net it'd be a safe low-cpu way of serving git
> files. 'cause the git protocol is quite expensive server-side (io+cpu)
> as we've seen with kernel.org. Being really smart with a cgi is
> probably going to be expensive too.

It's probably better and faster than relying on a feature which does not exactly help.

Ciao, Dscho