Re: Recent unresolved issues: shallow clone

Hi,

On Fri, 14 Apr 2006, Carl Worth wrote:

I also read over some of your discussion of extending the protocol
with a new "shallow" extension.

I'm wondering if the shallow clone support couldn't be achieved
through a simpler tweak to the protocol semantics, (and no change to
protocol syntax), that would avoid the problem above. Specifically,
for shallow stuff, could we just do the same "want" and "have"
conversation with tree objects rather than commit objects?

It would not help your problem at all. "have commit" really means that you 
have the commit and all its ancestors and their combined tree objects and 
the combined tree objects' blob objects.

If you have a cauterized history, you know that you are lacking some of 
them. But you don't know which ones.

Now, issuing a pull could mean to get an object which was present in an 
old revision, which you unfortunately do not have (because you have a cut 
off history). Boom.

I know, this is probably unlikely, but not at all *impossible*, so you 
have to take care of that case. And you need a protocol extension for 
that.

Hth,
Dscho