Re: How to replace a single corrupt, packed object?

[Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2008, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> wrote:
> > OK, here's what the patch to allow repacking without -f and still using 
> > redundant objects in presence of pack corruption might look like.  
> > Please tell me if that works for you.
> 
> Aside from goto being considered harmful by some really smart people,

Well, other really smart people consider gotos perfectly fine when used 
judiciously.  So this ends up being a question of belief and taste.

> this patch makes a lot of sense.  Its only downside is a backwards
> goto within this function, but the code is actually still quite
> clear to me.

The actual downside I see with this patch is the fact that real data 
corruptions might be "fixed" automagically with user unaware of it.  
This could be a serious sign that the hardware is going bad and 
requiring the user to consciously use -f to fix things is good.  However 
it is most unlikely that redundant objects will be kept around in the 
normal case, hence manual intervention will be needed anyway to bring a 
copy of bad object into the repository.  So not having to use -f might 
not be such an issue.

> If this allows git to magically fix Dscho's bad pack, it may be
> worth including in the core tree.

Yep.


Nicolas