Re: metastore

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

david@lang.hm writes:

>> I'd rather not implement it at such a low level where a true
>> "checkout" happens.  For one thing, I am afraid that the special
>> casing will affect the normal codepath too much and would make
>> it into a maintenance nightmare.
>
> as I understand it, at this point you already choose between three
> options.
>
> 1. write to a file (and set the write bit if needed)
> 2. write to stdout
> 3. write to a pager program
>
> I am suggesting adding
> ...
> or am I missing something major here?

I do not think we are choosing any option in the codepath at
all.

What I mean by the normal "checkout" is what checkout_entry in
entry.c does.  There is no other option than (1) above.  I would
want to see an extremely good justification if you need to touch
that codepath to implement this fringe use case.

I do not think there is nothing that writes file contents to
stdout/pager other than "git cat-file" or "git show"; I do not
think they are what you have in mind when talking about managing
the files under /etc.  So unfortunately I do not understand the
rest of the discussion you made in your message.