Re: [PATCH] Support 64-bit indexes for pack files.

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Feb 27, 2007, 04:56 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.0.82.0702262333240.29426@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <20070226235510.GF1639@spearce.org>

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> Nico and I are neck deep in our pack version 4 topic.  That topic
> hits all of the same code you touched with your patch.

Although a good deal of code has been written already, we're still throwing completely crazy ideas back and forth which, if they survive the reality test, might change things quite a lot for the index.

> Our topic also requires us to change the index file format, and
> in doing so we have decided to extend the index records to look
> something like the following[*1*]:

[ delete new index format layout description ]

Although I suggested that format... like... yesterday, I'm already dismissing it now. I'd go with what I just posted instead.

But yet this depends on whether or not we consider this latest idea of ours a good thing or not, which require some math to be done to prove its usefulness.

Maybe we should post our notes here in order to gather extra comments from people or to debunk some of our insane ideas faster.

Show 6 quoted lines

> I want to say your patch shouldn't be merged without even bothering
> to review it.  The last time I was in this part of the git code
> (implementing sliding mmap window) Nico and Junio also both went in
> here and rewrote huge chunks.  Their changes prevented sliding mmap
> window from applying.  It was 6 months before I got back around to
> rewriting the patch.

The thing is, regardless of the pack v4 work, I think the approach used is not the best one. And because of the pack v4 work, we'll have to settle on something before too long anyway.

> So would you mind waiting a couple of weeks for 64 bit indexes?

Of course Troy's patch might be used by those who need it now. I think Junio might even park it in pu for reference. The pack index is not a precious piece of information and it can be thrown away and recreated with git-index-pack whenever there is an officially supported new index format.

> *1*: This was Nico's idea; I'm in agreement with him about it.

As mentioned above I'm not in agreement with myself anymore about it. ;-)

Nicolas