Re: git pack/unpack over bittorrent - works!

> >  * would you, or anyone else with enough knowledge of how this stuff
> > reaallly works, be willing to put some low-priority back-of-mind
> > thought into how to create a "canonical" pack format
> 
> We have.  We've even talked about it on the mailing list.  Multiple
> times.  Most times about how to support a p2p Git transport.
> That whole GitTorrent thing you are ignoring, we put some effort
> into coming up with a pack-like format that would be more stable,
> at the expense of being larger in total size.

> >  questions (not necessarily for nicolas) - can anyone think of any
> > good reasons _other_ than for multiple file-sharing to have a
> > "canonical" pack-object?
> 
> Yes, its called resuming a clone over git://.
> 
> Right now if you abort git:// you break the pack stream, and it
> cannot be restarted.  If we had a more consistent encoding we may
> be able to restart an aborted clone.
> 
> But we can't solve it.  Its a _very_ hard problem.
> 
> Nico, myself, and a whole lot of other very smart folks who really
> understand how Git works today have failed to identify a way to do
> this that we actually want to write, include in git, and maintain
> long-term.  Sure, anyone can come up with a specification that says
> "put this here, that there, break ties this way".  But we don't
> want to bind our hands and maintain those rules.