When we delete a ref, we have to rewrite the entire
packed-refs file. We take this opportunity to "curate" the
packed-refs file and drop any entries that are crufty or
broken.
Dropping broken entries (e.g., with bogus names, or ones
that point to missing objects) is actively a bad idea, as it
means that we lose any notion that the data was there in the
first place. Aside from the general hackiness that we might
lose any information about ref "foo" while deleting an
unrelated ref "bar", this may seriously hamper any attempts
by the user at recovering from the corruption in "foo".
They will lose the sha1 and name of "foo"; the exact pointer
may still be useful even if they recover missing objects
from a different copy of the repository. But worse, once the
ref is gone, there is no trace of the corruption. A
follow-up "git prune" may delete objects, even though it
would otherwise bail when seeing corruption.
We could just drop the "broken" bits from
curate_packed_refs, and continue to drop the "crufty" bits:
refs whose loose counterpart exists in the filesystem. This
is not wrong to do, and it does have the advantage that we
may write out a slightly smaller packed-refs file. But it
has two disadvantages:
1. It is a potential source of races or mistakes with
respect to these refs that are otherwise unrelated to
the operation. To my knowledge, there aren't any active
problems in this area, but it seems like an unnecessary
risk.
2. We have to spend time looking up the matching loose
refs for every item in the packed-refs file. If you
have a large number of packed refs that do not change,
that outweighs the benefit from writing out a smaller
packed-refs file (it doesn't get smaller, and you do a
bunch of directory traversal to find that out).
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Git - the stupid content tracker
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.
- random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not
actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a
mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
- stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the
dictionary of slang.
- "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually
works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
- "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public
License version 2 (some parts of it are under different licenses,
compatible with the GPLv2). It was originally written by Linus
Torvalds with help of a group of hackers around the net.
Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
See Documentation/gittutorial.txt to get started, then see
Documentation/giteveryday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and
Documentation/git-commandname.txt for documentation of each command.
If git has been correctly installed, then the tutorial can also be
read with "man gittutorial" or "git help tutorial", and the
documentation of each command with "man git-commandname" or "git help
commandname".
CVS users may also want to read Documentation/gitcvs-migration.txt
("man gitcvs-migration" or "git help cvs-migration" if git is
installed).
Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git-scm.com/
including full documentation and Git related tools.
The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git
mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature
requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org (read
Documentation/SubmittingPatches for instructions on patch submission).
To subscribe to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in
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The maintainer frequently sends the "What's cooking" reports that
list the current status of various development topics to the mailing
list. The discussion following them give a good reference for
project status, development direction and remaining tasks.
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