Re: Configurable callbacks for missing objects (we Re: upload-pack: support subtree packing)

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>]

2010/7/27 Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>:
> 2010/7/27 Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>:
>> But I've been thinking that a really elegant way to solve the problem could
>> be to have a user-configurable "get the missing objects" callback.  If any
>> part of git that *needs* an object can't find it, it calls this callback to
>> go try to retrieve it (either just that one object, or it can request to
>> download the object recursively, ie. everything it points to).
>>
>> Then shallow clones could just auto-fill themselves if you really need a
>> prior version, for example.
>
> What counts as "needing" an object?  Does 'git log -Sfoo' or 'git log
> --stat' need all missing blobs?  I'd personally dislike having such
> commands automatically result in huge downloads, but I'd probably
> dislike the automatic downloading in general so perhaps I'm just a
> misfit for the lazy clone usecase.  It's still an interesting question
> though -- what counts as needed?

I would say no by default (unless maybe a config option is set) but
you'd want to be able to force it on for a particular command.

Have fun,

Avery