[RFE] Teach hash-object to be able to choose signature types

["Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

Hi All,

I do not know whether this would be a good enhancement or micro project for
someone (maybe me) to take on, but I'm wondering whether it might be a good
idea to provide an option to hash-object to select the signature being
computed. The use case begins when someone computes an object signature and
stores a pre-converted SHA1 value. Then the repository is changed over to
SHA256. When hash-object is next called, perhaps in a different clone or
some other "next" scenario, the new signature will be SHA256, if I
understand this correctly, and from the perspective of the someone in the
use case, the signature mismatches.

What I am proposing is an option like --signature-type=SHA1|SHA256 or
similar as an option to hash-object to allow the non-default signature to be
selected explicitly. This is not entirely trivial looking through the code
and presumably would require either teaching hash_object_file_literally or
having a separate method to do the alternate calculation.

Thoughts?
Regards,
Randall

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