[PATCH 0/6] builtin/receive-pack: support pluggable packfile writes

[Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com>]

Greetings,

With bdee7b3013 (builtin/receive-pack: stage incoming objects via ODB
transactions, 2026-07-10), git-receive-pack(1) started using the ODB
transaction interfaces to stage incoming objects. While this brought the
command closer to being ODB backend agnostic, the underlying
git-index-pack(1) and git-unpack-objects(1) processes used to actually
write the objects to the transaction are still fundamentally tied to the
"files" backend.

This series aims to address this by introducing a generic
`odb_transaction_write_pack()` transaction interface to handle writing
the incoming packfile to the transaction. The existing logic in
git-receive-pack(1) that spawns the child processes to write the
packfile becomes the "files" backend implementation of this interface.

As part of this series, the first patch also introduces the
`odb_transaction_release()` transaction interface. This is done to
decouple freeing the transaction from committing it and is used later in
the series to allow the post-commit cleanup of the ".keep" lockfile to
be deffered until after references have been updated. I'm a bit
uncertain as to whether the "release" part of the transaction lifecyle
is really the appropriate spot for such logic though. An alternative
could be to introduce a separate post-commit transaction interface that
would exist to remove any lockfiles after reference updates have been
performed. I am not certain such an explicit transaction interface is
also the best route either. In this version, I've opted to keep it
simple for now and tie the lockfile cleanup to transaction release, but
I am open to change based on feedback. :)

Most of the other patches are just structural refactorings to prepare
git-receive-pack(1) to eventually use `odb_transaction_write_pack()`.
The final patch makes the switch in git-receive-pack(1).

Thanks for the review,
-Justin

Justin Tobler (6):
  odb/transaction: add transaction release interface
  builtin/receive-pack: pass shallow file explicitly
  builtin/receive-pack: lift global state out of unpack()
  builtin/receive-pack: report unpack errors via strbuf
  builtin/receive-pack: explicitly pass packfile fd
  odb/transaction: add transaction interface to write packfiles

 builtin/add.c            |   3 +-
 builtin/receive-pack.c   | 192 ++++++++++-----------------------------
 builtin/unpack-objects.c |   1 +
 builtin/update-index.c   |   2 +
 cache-tree.c             |   4 +-
 object-file.c            | 153 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 odb/transaction.c        |  19 +++-
 odb/transaction.h        |  77 ++++++++++++++++
 read-cache.c             |   4 +-
 9 files changed, 305 insertions(+), 150 deletions(-)


base-commit: 2c78326f810173a4f3aefd8021f1e07575412481
-- 
2.55.0.424.g13c7afec21