Re: [PATCH 1/5] Implement `scalar diagnose`

[Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 10:34:04AM +0100, René Scharfe wrote:
> Am 26.01.22 um 09:41 schrieb Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget:
> > Note: originally, Scalar was implemented in C# using the .NET API, where
> > we had the luxury of a comprehensive standard library that includes
> > basic functionality such as writing a `.zip` file. In the C version, we
> > lack such a commodity. Rather than introducing a dependency on, say,
> > libzip, we slightly abuse Git's `archive` command: Instead of writing
> > the `.zip` file directly, we stage the file contents in a Git index of a
> > temporary, bare repository, only to let `git archive` have at it, and
> > finally removing the temporary repository.
>
> git archive allows you to include untracked files in an archive with its
> option --add-file.  You can see an example in Git's Makefile; search for
> GIT_ARCHIVE_EXTRA_FILES.  It still requires a tree argument, but the
> empty tree object should suffice if you don't want to include any
> tracked files.  It doesn't currently support streaming, though, i.e.
> files are fully read into memory, so it's impractical for huge ones.

Using `--add-file` would likely be preferable to setting up a temporary
repository just to invoke `git archive` in it. Johannes would be the
expert to ask whether or not big files are going to be a problem here
(based on a cursory scan of the new functions in scalar.c, I don't
expect this to be the case).

The new stage_directory() function _could_ add `--add-file` arguments in
a loop around readdir(), but it might also be nice to add a new
`--add-directory` function to `git archive` which would do the "heavy"
lifting for us.

Thanks,
Taylor