Re: unexplained behavior/issue with git archive?

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

John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk> writes:

> With a small number of items, there should only be one output line, but
> if xargs invokes the command multiple times there will be multiple
> lines.  For example (using -L2 to force a maximum of two arguments per
> invocation):
>
> 	$ printf '%s\n' a b c | xargs -d'\n' echo | wc -l
> 	1
> 	$ printf '%s\n' a b c | xargs -d'\n' -L2 echo | wc -l
> 	2

Yup, I think this thread is mistitled; it looks like an "unexpected
behaviour with xargs".  Or "common pitfalls with xargs", perhaps.

Now, what would be a reasonable workaround.  To work around command
line length limits (not necessarily for xargs, but the exact same
issue would arise if you are trying to specify too many pathspecs on
the command line), many of our commands take paths from their
standard input.  Would it be reasonable to teach "git archive" to
also do so?

Or would it make sense to teach "git archive -o" a new mode to
append to an existing archive, so that repeated invocations of "git
archive" via such a use of "xargs" would create in the first
invocation and then keep appending to the same archive in the
subsequent invocations?