Re: Remove diff machinery dependency from read-cache

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Linus Torvalds wrote:

quoted

We could fix it a few ways

 - ignore it. Most git programs will get the pack handling functions 
   anyway, since they want to get object reading.

In fact, we should probably remove git-show-index. It may have some 
historical significance as a pack-file index debugger, but it has no 
actual redeeming features now, considering that the binary is a megabyte 
of useless crud with debugging info.

However, we do actually use it in t/t5302-pack-index.sh. So in the 
meantime, how about this hacky patch to simply just avoid xmalloc, and 
separating out the trivial hex functions into "hex.o".

This results in

  [torvalds@nehalem git]$ size git-show-index 
       text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
     222818    2276  112688  337782   52776 git-show-index (before)
       5696     624    1264    7584    1da0 git-show-index (after)

which is a whole lot better, no?

(Or make it a built-in, if we actually think we want to carry it along in 
the long run)

We tend to not remove things unless we are absolutely certain nobody uses
it, so probably making it built-in would be preferrable.  I don't think
show-index is used very often if ever, but scripts that use hash-object
would use it really often and would do so via its --stdin interface if it
knows that it is creating more than a dozen objects, so start-up time
required to map the whole git is probably not an issue.

I do use it, but for developing/debugging pack stuff.
I don't suggest removing it, but I don't think making it a built-in has 
value either.

So I really think that Linus' patch (which is missing hex.c btw) is a 
good thing to do, even if only for the cleanup value.

Then, git-show-index could probably become test-show-index and no longer 
leave the build directory.


Nicolas