From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: A shortcoming of the git repo format Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:40:36 -0700 Message-ID: <426FF8C4.8080809@zytor.com> References: <426F2671.1080105@zytor.com> <426FD3EE.5000404@zytor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Git Mailing List X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Apr 27 22:36:19 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([12.107.209.244]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DQtGE-0006L7-IA for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:35:54 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262003AbVD0UlI (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:41:08 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262006AbVD0UlI (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:41:08 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([209.128.68.124]:19133 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262003AbVD0Ukx (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:40:53 -0400 Received: from [10.4.1.13] (yardgnome.orionmulti.com [209.128.68.65]) (authenticated bits=0) by terminus.zytor.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j3RKeg7d011697 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:40:42 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-1.3.2 (X11/20050324) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: Linus Torvalds In-Reply-To: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.9 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on terminus.zytor.com Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Linus Torvalds wrote: > > No, that's definitely _not_ the point. > > I repeat: git does not do any free-form parsin AT ALL. The links are in > well-defined places, and you do not ever search for them. And that's > really very very important. > I know that. However, is that going to be true for all versions of the repository format over all time? If so, the repository format is brittle. > > Currently there is no such delimiter for that. > > There absolutely is. > > For a "commit", the format is... My point was that with a syntactic delimiter, one can write a tool that doesn't necessarily know everything about every tag, including future tags which may not have been invented when the tool was written. One can simply say "we don't do that"; finding an unknown tag is always a fatal error. That means the format is more brittle, but brittle does mean it breaks as opposed to getting deformed in some, potentially undesirable way. -hpa