From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:19:41 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] Add support for external programs for handling native fetches
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0907252017060.8306@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LNX.2.00.0907251330240.2147@iabervon.org>

Hi,

On Sat, 25 Jul 2009, Daniel Barkalow wrote:

> transport_get() can call transport_shim_init() to have list and
> fetch-ref operations handled by running a separate program as:
> 
>  git shim-<something> <remote> [<url>]
> 
> This program then accepts, on its stdin, "list" and "fetch <hex>
> <name>" commands; the former prints out a list of available refs and
> either their hashes or what they are symreefs to, while the latter
> fetches them into the local object database and prints a newline when done.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>
> ---
> This is similar to, but different from, my git-vcs-* stuff; this one 
> expects the helper to be able to look up sha1s for refs efficiently, and 
> to be able to fetch objects directly into the local object database 
> without fast-import. On the otherhand, it should be sufficiently general 
> to allow arbitrary methods for moving the data around.

I wonder if this cannot be integrated into the git-vcs stuff; after all, 
they do pretty much the same things, except that the vcs helpers are 
pretty dumb, and the shim helpers are not as dumb.

I could imagine that the name of the helper could reveal its capability to 
act as a shim helper: git-vcs-shim-http

Ciao,
Dscho