Re: [PATCH 00/16] odb: introduce "inmemory" source

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Fri, Apr 03, 2026 at 08:41:16AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
> 
> > this patch series introduces the second object database source type,
> > which is the "inmemory" source.
> 
> I cannot read the word without a hyphen, i.e.e.g., "in-memory".

Fair. I think I'll keep it as `odb_source_inmemory` in the sources,
which I find easier ot parse than `odb_source_in_memory`, but will adapt
to "in-memory" in prose. I already did this for most of the part, but
not in the cover letter indeed.

> > This source may seem somewhat odd at first: it always starts out empty,
> > and any object written into it will only exist in memory until the
> > process exits. But the source already serves a purpose in our codebase,
> > where some commands, for example git-blame(1), write an in-memory
> > worktree commit.
> 
> Intermediate tree and blob objects you need while making an octopus
> merge may also benefit from this feature, to stay only in-core
> without having to get written out to the outside world.
> 
> I understand that this is not meant to be used as a "we create them
> only for ourselves and they are available only to us while we work,
> but once we are satisfied we make them available to others", which
> is much better done by creating an on-disk ephemeral object store,
> write such objects in them, and then decide at the end of the
> process between discarding the ephemeral store and moving objects
> from there to the main object store.

Yeah, I think there's a bunch of use cases where this could be useful
going forward.

Patrick