Re: Allowing weak references to blobs and strong references to commits

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:

> So I thought, since commits are already allowed in tree objects, for
> submodules, why not add a bit to the mode that would tell git that
> those commit object references are meant to always be there aka strong
> reference, as opposed to the current weak references for submodules.

Unless you are recording the paths to these "commits" to be
potentially checked out on the filesystem, do not put them in a
"tree".  The entries in a tree object represent "This thing go to
this path in the working tree".

It is not clear to me (and because you said "I won't bother you with
all the whys and hows", I am guessing that it is OK for readers to
be unclear), but I think you only want to make sure "git fetch" and
"git push" transfers these objects, the graph formed by which is
*not* any part of the main history of the project.  It is perfectly
OK to represent these objects as a special purpose history and have
a ref point at its tip.  The "notes" database is represented that
way, for example.  And I do not see anything wrong to use octopus
merges in the history if you want to represent "here are the commit
objects that I care about at this point in the 'special purpose'
history (not the main history)".