Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add support for subversion dump format v3

David Barr wrote:

This series follows Jonathan Nieder's svn diff applier series.

Patches 1 to 4 add the required infrastructure to fast-import.
The primary feature is the addition of the cat-file command to
fast-import. This allows access to objects written to the
the current pack prior to a checkpoint and is critical to
retrieving full-texts to drive the diff applier.

Patch 5 adds the basic parsing necessary to process the v3 format.

Patch 6 adds logic around decoding prop deltas.

Patch 7 integrates svn-fe with svn-da to decode text deltas.
It was primarily authored by Jonathan but inspired by Ram and
completed by myself.
This is probably the most sprawling of the series and likely the
heaviest target of review.

Just wanted to say: thank you for working on this.  The code
(especially on the fast-import side) needs some pruning and the result
needs tests, but in the end, we are not far from an svn-fe that can
work with "svnrdump dump" output.

In case someone is feeling generous, here is a wishlist:

 - simplify the interface or add a wrapper script so callers do not
   have to use mkfifo

 - keep track of whether an error was encountered and exit nonzero
   in that case

 - rely on git to fetch old revisions (for copyfrom_rev etc) and stop
   keeping track of them in svn-fe.  This would simplify svn-fe a lot
   and pave the way for:

 - incremental imports (since no state has to persist)

And for the sake of tests:

 - a simple delta producer (the remote helper would need this to
   drive "svnrdump load", anyway)

 - clarification (sharpening) of the notes/svndiff and
   notes/dump-load-format.txt specs in Subversion