Re: Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution

From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Feb 3, 2023, 04:02 UTC
Message-ID: <Y9yHWFh0ijwrqhOX@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Y9wo4iH2crlt26+d@kitenet.net>

On Thu, Feb 02, 2023 at 05:19:30PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:

> In my opinion as the original developer of pristine-tar, it's too
> complicated to be usefully used by git. The problem it solves is of a
> larger scope than the problem git has here. (I hope.)

Well, the problem which I believe folks on this thread are trying to deal with is a way to reconstruct a bit-for-bit compressed tarball of a particular release in a way that minimizes the cost of storage in the git tree. One way of doing that would be to guarantee that git archive would return something which is always bit-for-bit identical. Another way is to use something like pristine tar.

I'll grant that pristine tar does solve a bit more of the problem than what has been stated, since it allows the creator of the tarball to remove some files, or add some auto-generated files (e.g., after running autoreconf), and so in that way, pristine tar does solve a somewhat larger problem than what was expressed in this thread.

That being said, however, pristine-tar is **extremely** useful, and I'm very happy, and very thankful, that you wrote it. It has been super, super useful.

Cheers,

						- Ted