Re: Git dumb HTTP protocol should work without update-server-info

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Sep 8, 2025, 09:40 UTC
Message-ID: <aL6kevExmhesoEWN@pks.im>
In-Reply-To: <aL2fn4j5uhrVWrDp@fruit.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Sun, Sep 07, 2025 at 03:07:11PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

> I will also note that the dumb HTTP protocol doesn't work with reftable
> and there was some suggestion of removing it for Git 3.0.  It certainly
> will not work out of the box with Git 3.0, since the default is
> reftable.

Yes, indeed. In theory though reftables could also be the solution to the underlying issue: the client can be tought to read the "tables.list" file and then fetch all tables listed therein. The result would be fully consistent, unless any of the tables gets garbage collected. The client would notice and abort the operation, after which it could restart the operation.

In that case there would be no need for git-update-server-info(1) anymore. The "tables.list" file sits in a well-known location, identifies all other tables we have to download, and there are no atomicity issues anymore.

The catch of course is that somebody would have to implement this :)

Patrick