Re: [WIP PATCH] Add 'git fast-export', the sister of 'git fast-import'

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi,

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Karl Hasselstr?m wrote:

> On 2007-11-26 16:48:14 +0000, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 25 Nov 2007, Karl Hasselstr?m wrote:
> >
> > > On 2007-11-23 15:59:58 -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have been considering creating a "git-gui daemon" process that 
> > > > links to libgit.a and can be driven bidirectionally through its 
> > > > stdin/stdout. Based on git-fast-export, sorta. But I haven't even 
> > > > started it...
> > > >
> > > > But the idea is sort of what Han-Wen wants. Why should I fork 
> > > > rev-parse to get a ref value? Or update-ref to change one?
> > >
> > > Obviously, something like this would be very valuable for StGit as 
> > > well.
> >
> > Could you be a little more specific _what_ you want to do, and _how_ 
> > this could be done with fast-export | fast-import?
> 
> Currently, a single StGit command can result in quite a few invocations 
> of git-cat-file, for example, each of which forks off a new process. If 
> it could start just one daemon such as Shawn proposed, and feed it 
> simple questions and commands about blobs, trees, commits, and refs, 
> that would probably be quite a lot faster.
> 
> From what I understand, this is not something that would fit a 
> fast-export | fast-import pipeline. Which is why I didn't take the time 
> to elaborate on (or indeed find out) exactly which commands StGit would 
> like such a daemon to support.
> 
> By the way: one command one _would_ likely want in the daemon is "list 
> modified files". Being long-lived (not when driven by StGit, perhaps, 
> but definitely when driven by git-gui or qgit), the daemon would be able 
> to use inotify for that.

Ah, so you would like something like "git --interactive"?  This is indeed 
a completely different scope than the fast-export thingie, which is meant 
as kind of a mysqldump tool.  Indeed, you could use it even as a (kind of 
a) stash of the repo instead of the working tree.

Ciao,
Dscho