Re: [RFC/PATCH v3 00/16] Add initial experimental external ODB support

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 13, 2016, 20:05 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqshpr1tox.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UFD1=-xKWaDnGKrtm2mzVxpH7N-Q3iqnOJeOM5QrtNpitrA@mail.gmail.com>

Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> In general I think that having a lot of refs is really a big problem
> right now in Git as many big organizations using Git are facing this
> problem in one form or another.
> So I think that support for a big number of refs is a separate and
> important problem that should and hopefully will be solved.

But you do not have to make it worse.

Is "refs" a good match for the problem you are solving? Or is it merely an expedient thing to use? I think it is the latter, judging by your mentioning RefTree. Whatever mechanism we choose, that will be carved into stone in users' repositories and you'd end up having to support it, and devise the migration path out of it if the initial selection is too problematic.

That is why people (not just me) pointed out upfront that using refs for this purose would not scale.