Re: two questions about the format of loose object

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 1, 2008, 11:32 UTC
Message-ID: <m33ah8jfm2.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <4933AE55.2090007@gmail.com>

Liu Yubao <yubao.liu@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Liu Yubao <yubao.liu@gmail.com> writes:
> > 
> > A hint for understanding why loose objects are compressed is that
> > packfiles were invented much later in the history of git.
> > 
> > These are both good questions, and it might have made a difference if they
> > were posed in early April 2005.
> > 
> > At this point, the plain and clear answer to both of these "Why not"
> > questions is "because that is the way it is and it is costly to change
> > them now in thousands of repositories people use every day."

[...]

> 
> Thanks for your explanation, but I doubt if it's too costly to change the
> format of loose object, after all this doesn't change the format of pack
> file and affect git-pull/fetch of old git client.

[...]

Show 5 quoted lines

> cons:
> 
> * old git client can't read loose objects in new format
>   (People degrade git rarely and old git can read pack files
>    generated by new git, so it's not a big problem)

You forgot about "dumb" protocols, namely HTTP and (deprecated) rsync (and IIRC also FTP), which doesn't generate packfiles, and would get loose object in format intelligible for old clients.

IIRC this was main reason why core.legacyHeaders = false was abandoned.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git