Re: [RFC] git cat-file "literally" option

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 5:58 AM, Duy Nguyen [off-list ref] wrote:

... skip the enum object_type conversion. You probably need special
treatment for packed objects too.

I do not think you can store object of type "bogus" in a pack data stream
to begin with, so I wouldn't worry about packed objects.

"cat-file --literally" that does not take "-t" would not be useful, as the
output "cat-file <type> <object>" does not tell what <type> the thing
is. Other things like sizes and existence can be inferred once you have
an interface to do "cat-file <type> <object>", so in that sense -e and -s
are not essential (this also applies to "cat-file" without --literally).

By definition, "--literally -p" would not be able to do anything fancier than
just dump the bytes (i.e. what "cat-file <type> <object>" does), as the
bogus type is not something the code would know the best external
representation for.