Re: git-archive and tar options

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 07:45:07PM +0200, René Scharfe wrote:

quoted

quoted

We didn't when git-archive was written, but these days we have
get_sha1_with_context to remember incidental things about an object we
look up. It should perhaps remember the commit (if any) we used to reach
a treeish, and then the above command line could still insert the pax
header.

That's a good idea to increase consistency, as there shouldn't really be
a difference in output between the two subdirectory syntaxes.

The patch to do this is pretty tiny. See below.

There are a few issues, though:

  1. I think this is probably the right thing to do, and most people
     will be happy about it. But I guess I can see an argument that the
     commit-id should not be there, as the subtree does not represent
     that commit.

     IOW, if you assume the commit-id in the output means
     "by the way, this came from commit X", this change is a good thing.
     If you assume it means "this is the tree from commit X", then it's
     not.  I have no idea how people use it. I never have, but I always
     assumed the use case was "I have this random tarball. Where did it
     come from?".

Perhaps we should embed '<commit-id>:<subtree>' instead in pax header,
in that case?  Or <commit-id>.<subtree> if ':' is forbidden.

-- 
Jakub Narębski
Poland