On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 05:47:56PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > > > It really makes me wonder if this "unknown type" stuff has any value > > at all. You can create an object with any type using "hash-object > > --literally -t". And you can ask about its type and size. But you can > > never retrieve the object content! Nor can you pack it or transfer it, > > since packs use a numeric type field. > > Correct. IIRC, the "--literally" support was mostly for debugging, > and as you noticed, is very much limited because it can only create > funny objects that are loose. And the debugging was not really about > adding more object types, but was more about "what would our code do > when we see an object that is corrupt whose type we do not recognise". > > I personally think the "--literally" should not survive the Git 3.0 > boundary. It is quite useful for testing intentionally broken objects, like commits with malformed author/committer lines, or trees with out-of-order entries, etc. Perhaps we could replace that with a test helper that is only accessible within the test suite that acts like "hash-object --literally" and remove "--literally" from the plumbing interface? I dunno. Thanks, Taylor
