Hi Rob, glad these two efforts dovetail nicely! On 16 Feb 2022, at 10:39, Robert Coup wrote: > Hi John, > > On Wed, 9 Feb 2022 at 02:41, John Cai via GitGitGadget > <gitgitgadget@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> This patch series makes partial clone more useful by making it possible to >> run repack to remove objects from a repository (replacing it with promisor >> objects). This is useful when we want to offload large blobs from a git >> server onto another git server, or even use an http server through a remote >> helper. >> >> In [A], a --refilter option on fetch and fetch-pack is being discussed where >> either a less restrictive or more restrictive filter can be used. In the >> more restrictive case, the objects that already exist will not be deleted. >> But, one can imagine that users might want the ability to delete objects >> when they apply a more restrictive filter in order to save space, and this >> patch series would also allow that. > > This all makes sense to me, and the implementation is remarkably short - > gluing together capabilities that are already there, and writing tests. > > *But*, running `repack --filter` drops objects from the object db. > That seems like > a capability Git shouldn't idly expose without people understanding the > consequences - mostly that they really have another copy elsewhere or they > will lose data, and it won't necessarily be obvious for a long time. Otherwise > it is a footgun. Yes, great point. I think there was concern from Stolee around this as well. > > I don't know whether that is just around naming (--delete-filter / > --drop-filter / > --expire-filter ?), and/or making the documentation very explicit that > this isn't so > much "omitting certain objects from a packfile" as irretrievably > deleting objects. Yeah, making the name very clear (I kind of like --delete-filter) would certainly help. Also, to have more protection we can either 1. add a config value that needs to be set to true for repack to remove objects (repack.allowDestroyFilter). 2. --filter is dry-run by default and prints out objects that would have been removed, and it has to be combined with another flag --destroy in order for it to actually remove objects from the odb. > > Rob :)
