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Commit c34c9a9d authored by Junio C Hamano's avatar Junio C Hamano
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bundle v3: the beginning


The bundle v3 format introduces an ability to have the bundle header
(which describes what references in the bundled history can be
fetched, and what objects the receiving repository must have in
order to unbundle it successfully) in one file, and the bundled pack
stream data in a separate file.

A v3 bundle file begins with a line with "# v3 git bundle", followed
by zero or more "extended header" lines, and an empty line, finally
followed by the list of prerequisites and references in the same
format as v2 bundle.  If it uses the "split bundle" feature, there
is a "data: $URL" extended header line, and nothing follows the list
of prerequisites and references.  Also, "sha1: " and "size: "
extended header lines may exist to help validating that the pack
stream data matches the bundle header.

A typical expected use of a split bundle is to help initial clone
that involves a huge data transfer, and would go like this:

 - Any repository people would clone and fetch from would regularly
   be repacked, and it is expected that there would be a packfile
   without prerequisites that holds all (or at least most) of the
   history of it (call it pack-$name.pack).

 - After arranging that packfile to be downloadable over popular
   transfer methods used for serving static files (such as HTTP or
   HTTPS) that are easily resumable as $URL/pack-$name.pack, a v3
   bundle file (call it $name.bndl) can be prepared with an extended
   header "data: $URL/pack-$name.pack" to point at the download
   location for the packfile, and be served at "$URL/$name.bndl".

 - An updated Git client, when trying to "git clone" from such a
   repository, may be redirected to $URL/$name.bndl", which would be
   a tiny text file (when split bundle feature is used).

 - The client would then inspect the downloaded $name.bndl, learn
   that the corresponding packfile exists at $URL/pack-$name.pack,
   and downloads it as pack-$name.pack, until the download succeeds.
   This can easily be done with "wget --continue" equivalent over an
   unreliable link.  The checksum recorded on the "sha1: " header
   line and the length of the file on the "size: " header line are
   expected to be used by this downloader.

 - After fully downloading $name.bndl and pack-$name.pack and
   storing them next to each other, the client would clone from the
   $name.bndl; this would populate the newly created repository with
   reasonably recent history.

 - Then the client can issue "git fetch" against the original
   repository to obtain the most recent part of the history created
   since the bundle was made.

Signed-off-by: default avatarJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
parent 2787ec7c
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