Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > On Thu, Sep 07, 2017 at 12:24:02PM -0700, Stefan Beller wrote: > >> > We've discussed storing true generation numbers in the past, which would >> > make this optimization more robust, as well as allow us to speed up many >> > other traversals (e.g., the "tag --contains"). It's something I'd like >> > to revisit, but it's not at the top of the pile. >> >> (We just had an office discussion if this is part of the hash transition plan, >> i.e. have a field in the commit object to contain its generation number. >> and as I think the generation numbers would lead to fast and correct >> behavior unlike the current heuristic which is only fast, I would try >> to make a strong point actual generation numbers inside commit objects) > > I'm still moderately against storing generation numbers inside the > objects. They're redundant with the existing parent pointers, which > means it's an opportunity for the two sets of data to disagree. And as > we've seen, once errors are cemented in history it's very hard to fix > them, because you break any history built on top. > > I'm much more in favor of building a local cache of generation numbers > (either on the fly or during repacks, where we can piggy-back on the > existing pack .idx for indexing). I guess our mails crossed. Yes, objects that are needlessly broken only because they botch computation of derivable values are real problem, as we need to accomodate them forever because histories can and will be built on top of them. On the other hand, seeing that the world did not stop even with some projects have trees with entries whose mode are written with 0-padding on the left in the ancient part of their histories, it might not be such a big deal. I dunno.
