Re: [RESEND PATCHv2] contrib: remove git-convert-objects

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 19, 2017, 20:57 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqo9z2zs2o.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170119202941.6575-1-sbeller@google.com>

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

> git-convert-objects, originally named git-convert-cache was used in
> early 2005 to convert to a new repository format, e.g. adding an author
> date.

I think this description is not wrong per-se but misses the much more important point. In the very early days of Git, the objects were named after SHA-1 of deflated loose object representation, which meant that tweak in zlib or change of compression level would give the same object different names X-<. This program was to convert an ancient history with these objects and rewrite them to match the new object naming scheme where the name comes from a hash of the inflated representation.

> By now the need for conversion of the very early repositories is less
> relevant, we no longer need to keep it in contrib; remove it.

I am not sure if removal of it matters, and I suspect that we saw no reaction from anybody because nobody thought it deserves the brain-cycle to decide whether to remove it. I dunno.