Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] Documentation: describe connectivity checking

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Oct 6, 2026, 05:59 UTC
Message-ID: <asSOJVUTS3BMq6kS@pks.im>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqece4j6t4.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Oct 05, 2026 at 12:17:27PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
> 
> >> +Full connectivity check
> >> +-----------------------
> >> +
> >> +`check_connected()` (see `connected.c`) normally performs the
> >
> > I'm always a bit hesitant to directly refer to code in our docs. We
> > should either make this documentation part of "connected.c" directly, or
> > we should not refer to code. Otherwise, chances that this documentation
> > grows stale is very high.
> 
> This is totally outside the topic of documentation updates, but it
> makes me wonder if we should pay attention to connectivity roots
> other than refs (like index entries) that we use when we run fsck.

Hmm, I'm not sure. I guess performance of the connectivity check is typically an issue on the server side only, much less so on the client side. And the server would of course typically not even have an index entry at all. Same for reflogs, at least in many setups.

I also wonder whether that'd really speed things up if we add more data sources. At GitLab we typically have the problem that we have too many connectivity roots with refs alone, and that is making the whole check painfully slow in some repositories. So adding more connectivity roots to it would probably be counterproductive.

Patrick