RE: [PATCH v6 17/19] fsck: Introduce `git fsck --quick`

On June 21, 2015 12:56 AM, Michael Haggerty wrote:

On 06/19/2015 10:53 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Can you think of a name for the option that is as short as `--quick`
but means the same as `--connectivity-only`?

No I can't.  I think `--connectivity-only` is a very good name that is
unfortunately a mouthful, I agree that we need a name that is as short
as `--xxxxx` that means the same as `--connectivity-only`.  I do not
think `--quick` is that word; it does not mean such a thing.

`--connectivity-only` says that "of all the things that fsck can do, skip

everything

except for the connectivity check". But the switch really affects not the
connectivity part of the checks (that part is done in either case), but

the blob

part. So, if we ignore the length of the option name for a moment, it

seems like

the options should be something like

`--check-blob-integrity`/`--no-check-blob-

integrity`. The default would remain `--check-blob-integrity` of course,

but

* Someday there might be a config setting that people can use to change

the

default behavior of fsck to `--no-check-blob-integrity`.
* Someday there might be other expensive types of checks [1] that we want

to

turn on/off independent of blob integrity checks.

But now that I'm writing this, a silly question occurs to me: Do we need

an

overall option like this at all? If I demote all blob-integrity checks to

"ignore"

via the mechanism that you have added, then shouldn't fsck automatically
detect that it doesn't have to open the blobs at all and enable this

speedup

automatically? So maybe `--(no-)?check-blob-integrity` is actually a

shorthand

for turning a few more specific checks on/off at once.

As for thinking of a shorter name for the option: assuming the blob

integrity

checks can be turned on and off independently as described above, then I

think

it is reasonable to *also* add a `--quick` option defined as

--quick: Skip some expensive checks, dramatically reducing the
    runtime of `git fsck`. Currently this is equivalent to
    `--no-check-blob-integrity`.

In the future if we invent other expensive checks we might also add them

to the

list of things that are skipped by `--quick`.

Synonym suggestions: --links or --relations
I was going to include --refs but that may be ambiguous. Links also has
meaning so it's probably out and --hitch may just be silly and needlessly
introducing a new term.

Cheers,
Randall

-- Brief whoami: NonStop&UNIX developer since approximately
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-- In my real life, I talk too much.