Re: If you would write git from scratch now, what would you change?

["Dana How" <danahow@gmail.com>]

On Nov 25, 2007 1:48 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you would write git from scratch now, from the beginning, without
> concerns for backwards compatibility, what would you change, or what
> would you want to have changed?

Currently data can be quickly copied from pack to pack,
but data cannot be quickly copied blob->pack or pack->blob
(there was an alternate blob format that supported this,
 but it was deprecated).  Using the pack format for blobs
would fix this.  It would also mean blobs wouldn't need to
be uncompressed to get the blob type or size I believe.

So far this has prevented me from deploying git here
(and is half the reason I have not been active recently).
Currently we use p4 and we have large files.
When a large file is checked in (submitted),
it is compressed *once* and sent over the network --
these are the only delays that end-users experience.

The equivalent operation in git would require the creation of
the blob,  and then of a temporary pack to send to the server.
This requires 3 calls to zlib for each blob,  which for very
large files is not acceptable at my site.

Yes,  git has much better features.
But 80%+ of my workgroup will not use them,
and only notice that git is "slower".

Thanks,
-- 
Dana L. How  danahow@gmail.com  +1 650 804 5991 cell