Re: [PATCH 01/10] loose_object_info(): BUG() on inflating content with unknown type

[Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 05:47:56PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>
> > It really makes me wonder if this "unknown type" stuff has any value
> > at all. You can create an object with any type using "hash-object
> > --literally -t". And you can ask about its type and size. But you can
> > never retrieve the object content! Nor can you pack it or transfer it,
> > since packs use a numeric type field.
>
> Correct.  IIRC, the "--literally" support was mostly for debugging,
> and as you noticed, is very much limited because it can only create
> funny objects that are loose.  And the debugging was not really about
> adding more object types, but was more about "what would our code do
> when we see an object that is corrupt whose type we do not recognise".
>
> I personally think the "--literally" should not survive the Git 3.0
> boundary.

It is quite useful for testing intentionally broken objects, like
commits with malformed author/committer lines, or trees with
out-of-order entries, etc.

Perhaps we could replace that with a test helper that is only accessible
within the test suite that acts like "hash-object --literally" and
remove "--literally" from the plumbing interface? I dunno.

Thanks,
Taylor