Re: more git updates..

Linus Torvalds
2005-04-09T21:06:27Z

On Sat, 9 Apr 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> I suspect that I have to change the file format. Maybe make the "tree"
> object a two-level thing, and have a "directory" object.
>
> Then a "tree" object would point to a "directory" object, which would in
> turn point to the individual files (and other "directory" objects, of
> course). That way a commit that only changes a few files will only need to
> create a few new "directory" objects, instead of creating one huge "tree"
> object.

Actually, I guess I wouldn't have to change the format. I could just
extend the existing "tree" object to be able to point to other trees, and
that's it.

The downside of that is that then a tree wouldn't have a canonical format
any more: you could have two trees that have the exact same content, but
they'd haev different names. They should obviously merge very easily (and
thus you could create a new merge that _does_ have a common name), but
it's ugly.

I'll have to think about it. It's good to notice these issues early, this
was the first time I had actually tried to check in a kernel-sized tree
for real.

Linus