From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Shawn Pearce Subject: Re: Current Issues #3 Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 19:12:57 -0400 Message-ID: <20060522231257.GA21124@spearce.org> References: <7v8xoue9eo.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Tue May 23 01:13:16 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1FiJaH-0001vy-6Q for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Tue, 23 May 2006 01:13:09 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751292AbWEVXNF (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 May 2006 19:13:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751294AbWEVXNF (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 May 2006 19:13:05 -0400 Received: from corvette.plexpod.net ([64.38.20.226]:40333 "EHLO corvette.plexpod.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751292AbWEVXNE (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 May 2006 19:13:04 -0400 Received: from cpe-72-226-60-173.nycap.res.rr.com ([72.226.60.173] helo=asimov.home.spearce.org) by corvette.plexpod.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.52) id 1FiJZy-0002dE-SL; Mon, 22 May 2006 19:12:51 -0400 Received: by asimov.home.spearce.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 89A9620FB0C; Mon, 22 May 2006 19:12:58 -0400 (EDT) To: Daniel Barkalow Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - corvette.plexpod.net X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - vger.kernel.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [0 0] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - spearce.org X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Daniel Barkalow wrote: > On Mon, 22 May 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > * reflog > > > > I still haven't merged this series to "next" -- I do not have > > much against what the code does, but I am unconvinced if it is > > useful. Also objections raised on the list that this can be > > replaced by making sure that a repository that has hundreds of > > tags usable certainly have a point. > > I think it would make gitweb's summary view clearer, and Linus seemed > interested in being able to look up what happened in the fast forward > which was the first of several merges in a day. > > It could be replaced by a repository with hundreds of machine-readable > tags with code to parse dates into queries for suitable tags. But I don't > think there's an advantage to using the tag mechanism here, because you > never want to look the history up by exactly which history it is (the > thing that a tag ref is good for); you'll be looking for whatever reflog > item is the newest not after a specified time, where the specified time is > almost never a time that a reflog item was created. The thing is this might also be easily represented as a structure of tags; for example: refs/logs/heads//// ::: where the tag is a tag of the commit which was valid in that ref at that time. Searching for an entry "around a particular time" isn't that much more difficult than parsing a file, you just have to walk backwards through the sorted directory listings then read the tag object which matches; that tag object will point at the tree/commit/tag which is was in that ref.. What's ugly about this is simply the disk storage: a ref file is an expensive thing (relatively speaking) on most UNIX file systems due to the inode overhead. If this was stored in a more compact format (such as a GIT tree) then this would cost very little. So the alternative that I have been mentaly kicking around for the past two days is storing the GIT_DIR/refs directory within a standard GIT tree. This of course would need to be an option that gets enabled by the user as currently most tools expect the refs directory to actually be a directory, not a tree. The advantage here is that unlike proposed reflog it is a compact ref representation which could be used by other features, such as tagging a GIT commit with the unique name of the same change from another SCM. Or tagging your repository on every automated build, which runs once every 5 minutes. -- Shawn.