Re: [PATCH 4/4] Teach "git clone" to pack refs

[Johan Herland <johan@herland.net>]

On Sunday 15 June 2008, Jeff King wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 04:06:16PM +0200, Johan Herland wrote:
> > +	pack_refs(PACK_REFS_ALL);
>
> I haven't looked carefully at the pack_refs code, but my understanding
> was that this would pack _all_ refs, including branches. Don't we
> generally try to leave branches unpacked, since they change a lot? IOW,
> shouldn't this just be "pack_refs(0)"?

Yes, for many repos it does not make much sense to pack branches. But in the 
case where the repo has many inactive branches (I have repos with 1000 
branches where at most 5-10 are still active), I'd much rather pack all 
branches and then later "unpack" the active ones, than write all 
those "loose" refs as separate files onto the filesystem (e.g. in CygWin 
*shudder*). In any case, the user normally does not work actively on 
hundreds of branches, so the overhead of "unpacking" active branches should 
be fairly negligible in any case.


...Johan

-- 
Johan Herland, <johan@herland.net>
www.herland.net