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-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-config.txt18
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt4
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-gitattributes.txt2
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-object-access.txt2
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-oid-array.txt17
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/api-submodule-config.txt2
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt97
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt172
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/directory-rename-detection.txt115
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/hash-function-transition.txt240
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt4
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt92
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt7
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt208
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt439
-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/shallow.txt20
16 files changed, 1198 insertions, 241 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-config.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-config.txt
index 9a778b0cad..fa39ac9d71 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-config.txt
@@ -47,21 +47,23 @@ will first feed the user-wide one to the callback, and then the
repo-specific one; by overwriting, the higher-priority repo-specific
value is left at the end).
-The `git_config_with_options` function lets the caller examine config
+The `config_with_options` function lets the caller examine config
while adjusting some of the default behavior of `git_config`. It should
almost never be used by "regular" Git code that is looking up
configuration variables. It is intended for advanced callers like
`git-config`, which are intentionally tweaking the normal config-lookup
process. It takes two extra parameters:
-`filename`::
-If this parameter is non-NULL, it specifies the name of a file to
-parse for configuration, rather than looking in the usual files. Regular
-`git_config` defaults to `NULL`.
+`config_source`::
+If this parameter is non-NULL, it specifies the source to parse for
+configuration, rather than looking in the usual files. See `struct
+git_config_source` in `config.h` for details. Regular `git_config` defaults
+to `NULL`.
-`respect_includes`::
-Specify whether include directives should be followed in parsed files.
-Regular `git_config` defaults to `1`.
+`opts`::
+Specify options to adjust the behavior of parsing config files. See `struct
+config_options` in `config.h` for details. As an example: regular `git_config`
+sets `opts.respect_includes` to `1` by default.
Reading Specific Files
----------------------
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
index 7fae00f44f..5abb8e8b1f 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-directory-listing.txt
@@ -53,8 +53,8 @@ The notable options are:
not be returned even if all of its contents are ignored. In
this case, the contents are returned as individual entries.
+
-If this is set, files and directories that explicity match an ignore
-pattern are reported. Implicity ignored directories (directories that
+If this is set, files and directories that explicitly match an ignore
+pattern are reported. Implicitly ignored directories (directories that
do not match an ignore pattern, but whose contents are all ignored)
are not reported, instead all of the contents are reported.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-gitattributes.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-gitattributes.txt
index e7cbb7c13a..45f0df600f 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-gitattributes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-gitattributes.txt
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ To get the values of all attributes associated with a file:
* Iterate over the `attr_check.items[]` array to examine
the attribute names and values. The name of the attribute
- described by a `attr_check.items[]` object can be retrieved via
+ described by an `attr_check.items[]` object can be retrieved via
`git_attr_name(check->items[i].attr)`. (Please note that no items
will be returned for unset attributes, so `ATTR_UNSET()` will return
false for all returned `attr_check.items[]` objects.)
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-object-access.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-object-access.txt
index a1162e5bcd..5b29622d00 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-object-access.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-object-access.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
object access API
=================
-Talk about <sha1_file.c> and <object.h> family, things like
+Talk about <sha1-file.c> and <object.h> family, things like
* read_sha1_file()
* read_object_with_reference()
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-oid-array.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-oid-array.txt
index b0c11f868d..9febfb1d52 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-oid-array.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-oid-array.txt
@@ -35,13 +35,18 @@ Functions
Free all memory associated with the array and return it to the
initial, empty state.
+`oid_array_for_each`::
+ Iterate over each element of the list, executing the callback
+ function for each one. Does not sort the list, so any custom
+ hash order is retained. If the callback returns a non-zero
+ value, the iteration ends immediately and the callback's
+ return is propagated; otherwise, 0 is returned.
+
`oid_array_for_each_unique`::
- Efficiently iterate over each unique element of the list,
- executing the callback function for each one. If the array is
- not sorted, this function has the side effect of sorting it. If
- the callback returns a non-zero value, the iteration ends
- immediately and the callback's return is propagated; otherwise,
- 0 is returned.
+ Iterate over each unique element of the list in sorted order,
+ but otherwise behave like `oid_array_for_each`. If the array
+ is not sorted, this function has the side effect of sorting
+ it.
Examples
--------
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/api-submodule-config.txt b/Documentation/technical/api-submodule-config.txt
index ee907c4a82..fb06089393 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/api-submodule-config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/api-submodule-config.txt
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ Data Structures
Functions
---------
-`void submodule_free()`::
+`void submodule_free(struct repository *r)`::
Use these to free the internally cached values.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt b/Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..cc0474ba3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+Git commit graph format
+=======================
+
+The Git commit graph stores a list of commit OIDs and some associated
+metadata, including:
+
+- The generation number of the commit. Commits with no parents have
+ generation number 1; commits with parents have generation number
+ one more than the maximum generation number of its parents. We
+ reserve zero as special, and can be used to mark a generation
+ number invalid or as "not computed".
+
+- The root tree OID.
+
+- The commit date.
+
+- The parents of the commit, stored using positional references within
+ the graph file.
+
+These positional references are stored as unsigned 32-bit integers
+corresponding to the array position within the list of commit OIDs. Due
+to some special constants we use to track parents, we can store at most
+(1 << 30) + (1 << 29) + (1 << 28) - 1 (around 1.8 billion) commits.
+
+== Commit graph files have the following format:
+
+In order to allow extensions that add extra data to the graph, we organize
+the body into "chunks" and provide a binary lookup table at the beginning
+of the body. The header includes certain values, such as number of chunks
+and hash type.
+
+All 4-byte numbers are in network order.
+
+HEADER:
+
+ 4-byte signature:
+ The signature is: {'C', 'G', 'P', 'H'}
+
+ 1-byte version number:
+ Currently, the only valid version is 1.
+
+ 1-byte Hash Version (1 = SHA-1)
+ We infer the hash length (H) from this value.
+
+ 1-byte number (C) of "chunks"
+
+ 1-byte (reserved for later use)
+ Current clients should ignore this value.
+
+CHUNK LOOKUP:
+
+ (C + 1) * 12 bytes listing the table of contents for the chunks:
+ First 4 bytes describe the chunk id. Value 0 is a terminating label.
+ Other 8 bytes provide the byte-offset in current file for chunk to
+ start. (Chunks are ordered contiguously in the file, so you can infer
+ the length using the next chunk position if necessary.) Each chunk
+ ID appears at most once.
+
+ The remaining data in the body is described one chunk at a time, and
+ these chunks may be given in any order. Chunks are required unless
+ otherwise specified.
+
+CHUNK DATA:
+
+ OID Fanout (ID: {'O', 'I', 'D', 'F'}) (256 * 4 bytes)
+ The ith entry, F[i], stores the number of OIDs with first
+ byte at most i. Thus F[255] stores the total
+ number of commits (N).
+
+ OID Lookup (ID: {'O', 'I', 'D', 'L'}) (N * H bytes)
+ The OIDs for all commits in the graph, sorted in ascending order.
+
+ Commit Data (ID: {'C', 'D', 'A', 'T' }) (N * (H + 16) bytes)
+ * The first H bytes are for the OID of the root tree.
+ * The next 8 bytes are for the positions of the first two parents
+ of the ith commit. Stores value 0x7000000 if no parent in that
+ position. If there are more than two parents, the second value
+ has its most-significant bit on and the other bits store an array
+ position into the Large Edge List chunk.
+ * The next 8 bytes store the generation number of the commit and
+ the commit time in seconds since EPOCH. The generation number
+ uses the higher 30 bits of the first 4 bytes, while the commit
+ time uses the 32 bits of the second 4 bytes, along with the lowest
+ 2 bits of the lowest byte, storing the 33rd and 34th bit of the
+ commit time.
+
+ Large Edge List (ID: {'E', 'D', 'G', 'E'}) [Optional]
+ This list of 4-byte values store the second through nth parents for
+ all octopus merges. The second parent value in the commit data stores
+ an array position within this list along with the most-significant bit
+ on. Starting at that array position, iterate through this list of commit
+ positions for the parents until reaching a value with the most-significant
+ bit on. The other bits correspond to the position of the last parent.
+
+TRAILER:
+
+ H-byte HASH-checksum of all of the above.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt b/Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..001395e950
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,172 @@
+Git Commit Graph Design Notes
+=============================
+
+Git walks the commit graph for many reasons, including:
+
+1. Listing and filtering commit history.
+2. Computing merge bases.
+
+These operations can become slow as the commit count grows. The merge
+base calculation shows up in many user-facing commands, such as 'merge-base'
+or 'status' and can take minutes to compute depending on history shape.
+
+There are two main costs here:
+
+1. Decompressing and parsing commits.
+2. Walking the entire graph to satisfy topological order constraints.
+
+The commit graph file is a supplemental data structure that accelerates
+commit graph walks. If a user downgrades or disables the 'core.commitGraph'
+config setting, then the existing ODB is sufficient. The file is stored
+as "commit-graph" either in the .git/objects/info directory or in the info
+directory of an alternate.
+
+The commit graph file stores the commit graph structure along with some
+extra metadata to speed up graph walks. By listing commit OIDs in lexi-
+cographic order, we can identify an integer position for each commit and
+refer to the parents of a commit using those integer positions. We use
+binary search to find initial commits and then use the integer positions
+for fast lookups during the walk.
+
+A consumer may load the following info for a commit from the graph:
+
+1. The commit OID.
+2. The list of parents, along with their integer position.
+3. The commit date.
+4. The root tree OID.
+5. The generation number (see definition below).
+
+Values 1-4 satisfy the requirements of parse_commit_gently().
+
+Define the "generation number" of a commit recursively as follows:
+
+ * A commit with no parents (a root commit) has generation number one.
+
+ * A commit with at least one parent has generation number one more than
+ the largest generation number among its parents.
+
+Equivalently, the generation number of a commit A is one more than the
+length of a longest path from A to a root commit. The recursive definition
+is easier to use for computation and observing the following property:
+
+ If A and B are commits with generation numbers N and M, respectively,
+ and N <= M, then A cannot reach B. That is, we know without searching
+ that B is not an ancestor of A because it is further from a root commit
+ than A.
+
+ Conversely, when checking if A is an ancestor of B, then we only need
+ to walk commits until all commits on the walk boundary have generation
+ number at most N. If we walk commits using a priority queue seeded by
+ generation numbers, then we always expand the boundary commit with highest
+ generation number and can easily detect the stopping condition.
+
+This property can be used to significantly reduce the time it takes to
+walk commits and determine topological relationships. Without generation
+numbers, the general heuristic is the following:
+
+ If A and B are commits with commit time X and Y, respectively, and
+ X < Y, then A _probably_ cannot reach B.
+
+This heuristic is currently used whenever the computation is allowed to
+violate topological relationships due to clock skew (such as "git log"
+with default order), but is not used when the topological order is
+required (such as merge base calculations, "git log --graph").
+
+In practice, we expect some commits to be created recently and not stored
+in the commit graph. We can treat these commits as having "infinite"
+generation number and walk until reaching commits with known generation
+number.
+
+We use the macro GENERATION_NUMBER_INFINITY = 0xFFFFFFFF to mark commits not
+in the commit-graph file. If a commit-graph file was written by a version
+of Git that did not compute generation numbers, then those commits will
+have generation number represented by the macro GENERATION_NUMBER_ZERO = 0.
+
+Since the commit-graph file is closed under reachability, we can guarantee
+the following weaker condition on all commits:
+
+ If A and B are commits with generation numbers N amd M, respectively,
+ and N < M, then A cannot reach B.
+
+Note how the strict inequality differs from the inequality when we have
+fully-computed generation numbers. Using strict inequality may result in
+walking a few extra commits, but the simplicity in dealing with commits
+with generation number *_INFINITY or *_ZERO is valuable.
+
+We use the macro GENERATION_NUMBER_MAX = 0x3FFFFFFF to for commits whose
+generation numbers are computed to be at least this value. We limit at
+this value since it is the largest value that can be stored in the
+commit-graph file using the 30 bits available to generation numbers. This
+presents another case where a commit can have generation number equal to
+that of a parent.
+
+Design Details
+--------------
+
+- The commit graph file is stored in a file named 'commit-graph' in the
+ .git/objects/info directory. This could be stored in the info directory
+ of an alternate.
+
+- The core.commitGraph config setting must be on to consume graph files.
+
+- The file format includes parameters for the object ID hash function,
+ so a future change of hash algorithm does not require a change in format.
+
+- Commit grafts and replace objects can change the shape of the commit
+ history. The latter can also be enabled/disabled on the fly using
+ `--no-replace-objects`. This leads to difficultly storing both possible
+ interpretations of a commit id, especially when computing generation
+ numbers. The commit-graph will not be read or written when
+ replace-objects or grafts are present.
+
+- Shallow clones create grafts of commits by dropping their parents. This
+ leads the commit-graph to think those commits have generation number 1.
+ If and when those commits are made unshallow, those generation numbers
+ become invalid. Since shallow clones are intended to restrict the commit
+ history to a very small set of commits, the commit-graph feature is less
+ helpful for these clones, anyway. The commit-graph will not be read or
+ written when shallow commits are present.
+
+Future Work
+-----------
+
+- After computing and storing generation numbers, we must make graph
+ walks aware of generation numbers to gain the performance benefits they
+ enable. This will mostly be accomplished by swapping a commit-date-ordered
+ priority queue with one ordered by generation number. The following
+ operations are important candidates:
+
+ - 'log --topo-order'
+ - 'tag --merged'
+
+- A server could provide a commit graph file as part of the network protocol
+ to avoid extra calculations by clients. This feature is only of benefit if
+ the user is willing to trust the file, because verifying the file is correct
+ is as hard as computing it from scratch.
+
+Related Links
+-------------
+[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/git/issues/detail?id=8
+ Chromium work item for: Serialized Commit Graph
+
+[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20110713070517.GC18566@sigill.intra.peff.net/
+ An abandoned patch that introduced generation numbers.
+
+[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170908033403.q7e6dj7benasrjes@sigill.intra.peff.net/
+ Discussion about generation numbers on commits and how they interact
+ with fsck.
+
+[3] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170908034739.4op3w4f2ma5s65ku@sigill.intra.peff.net/
+ More discussion about generation numbers and not storing them inside
+ commit objects. A valuable quote:
+
+ "I think we should be moving more in the direction of keeping
+ repo-local caches for optimizations. Reachability bitmaps have been
+ a big performance win. I think we should be doing the same with our
+ properties of commits. Not just generation numbers, but making it
+ cheap to access the graph structure without zlib-inflating whole
+ commit objects (i.e., packv4 or something like the "metapacks" I
+ proposed a few years ago)."
+
+[4] https://public-inbox.org/git/20180108154822.54829-1-git@jeffhostetler.com/T/#u
+ A patch to remove the ahead-behind calculation from 'status'.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/directory-rename-detection.txt b/Documentation/technical/directory-rename-detection.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..1c0086e287
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/technical/directory-rename-detection.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+Directory rename detection
+==========================
+
+Rename detection logic in diffcore-rename that checks for renames of
+individual files is aggregated and analyzed in merge-recursive for cases
+where combinations of renames indicate that a full directory has been
+renamed.
+
+Scope of abilities
+------------------
+
+It is perhaps easiest to start with an example:
+
+ * When all of x/a, x/b and x/c have moved to z/a, z/b and z/c, it is
+ likely that x/d added in the meantime would also want to move to z/d by
+ taking the hint that the entire directory 'x' moved to 'z'.
+
+More interesting possibilities exist, though, such as:
+
+ * one side of history renames x -> z, and the other renames some file to
+ x/e, causing the need for the merge to do a transitive rename.
+
+ * one side of history renames x -> z, but also renames all files within
+ x. For example, x/a -> z/alpha, x/b -> z/bravo, etc.
+
+ * both 'x' and 'y' being merged into a single directory 'z', with a
+ directory rename being detected for both x->z and y->z.
+
+ * not all files in a directory being renamed to the same location;
+ i.e. perhaps most the files in 'x' are now found under 'z', but a few
+ are found under 'w'.
+
+ * a directory being renamed, which also contained a subdirectory that was
+ renamed to some entirely different location. (And perhaps the inner
+ directory itself contained inner directories that were renamed to yet
+ other locations).
+
+ * combinations of the above; see t/t6043-merge-rename-directories.sh for
+ various interesting cases.
+
+Limitations -- applicability of directory renames
+-------------------------------------------------
+
+In order to prevent edge and corner cases resulting in either conflicts
+that cannot be represented in the index or which might be too complex for
+users to try to understand and resolve, a couple basic rules limit when
+directory rename detection applies:
+
+ 1) If a given directory still exists on both sides of a merge, we do
+ not consider it to have been renamed.
+
+ 2) If a subset of to-be-renamed files have a file or directory in the
+ way (or would be in the way of each other), "turn off" the directory
+ rename for those specific sub-paths and report the conflict to the
+ user.
+
+ 3) If the other side of history did a directory rename to a path that
+ your side of history renamed away, then ignore that particular
+ rename from the other side of history for any implicit directory
+ renames (but warn the user).
+
+Limitations -- detailed rules and testcases
+-------------------------------------------
+
+t/t6043-merge-rename-directories.sh contains extensive tests and commentary
+which generate and explore the rules listed above. It also lists a few
+additional rules:
+
+ a) If renames split a directory into two or more others, the directory
+ with the most renames, "wins".
+
+ b) Avoid directory-rename-detection for a path, if that path is the
+ source of a rename on either side of a merge.
+
+ c) Only apply implicit directory renames to directories if the other side
+ of history is the one doing the renaming.
+
+Limitations -- support in different commands
+--------------------------------------------
+
+Directory rename detection is supported by 'merge' and 'cherry-pick'.
+Other git commands which users might be surprised to see limited or no
+directory rename detection support in:
+
+ * diff
+
+ Folks have requested in the past that `git diff` detect directory
+ renames and somehow simplify its output. It is not clear whether this
+ would be desirable or how the output should be simplified, so this was
+ simply not implemented. Further, to implement this, directory rename
+ detection logic would need to move from merge-recursive to
+ diffcore-rename.
+
+ * am
+
+ git-am tries to avoid a full three way merge, instead calling
+ git-apply. That prevents us from detecting renames at all, which may
+ defeat the directory rename detection. There is a fallback, though; if
+ the initial git-apply fails and the user has specified the -3 option,
+ git-am will fall back to a three way merge. However, git-am lacks the
+ necessary information to do a "real" three way merge. Instead, it has
+ to use build_fake_ancestor() to get a merge base that is missing files
+ whose rename may have been important to detect for directory rename
+ detection to function.
+
+ * rebase
+
+ Since am-based rebases work by first generating a bunch of patches
+ (which no longer record what the original commits were and thus don't
+ have the necessary info from which we can find a real merge-base), and
+ then calling git-am, this implies that am-based rebases will not always
+ successfully detect directory renames either (see the 'am' section
+ above). merged-based rebases (rebase -m) and cherry-pick-based rebases
+ (rebase -i) are not affected by this shortcoming, and fully support
+ directory rename detection.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/hash-function-transition.txt b/Documentation/technical/hash-function-transition.txt
index 417ba491d0..bc2ace2a6e 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/hash-function-transition.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/hash-function-transition.txt
@@ -28,11 +28,30 @@ advantages:
address stored content.
Over time some flaws in SHA-1 have been discovered by security
-researchers. https://shattered.io demonstrated a practical SHA-1 hash
-collision. As a result, SHA-1 cannot be considered cryptographically
-secure any more. This impacts the communication of hash values because
-we cannot trust that a given hash value represents the known good
-version of content that the speaker intended.
+researchers. On 23 February 2017 the SHAttered attack
+(https://shattered.io) demonstrated a practical SHA-1 hash collision.
+
+Git v2.13.0 and later subsequently moved to a hardened SHA-1
+implementation by default, which isn't vulnerable to the SHAttered
+attack.
+
+Thus Git has in effect already migrated to a new hash that isn't SHA-1
+and doesn't share its vulnerabilities, its new hash function just
+happens to produce exactly the same output for all known inputs,
+except two PDFs published by the SHAttered researchers, and the new
+implementation (written by those researchers) claims to detect future
+cryptanalytic collision attacks.
+
+Regardless, it's considered prudent to move past any variant of SHA-1
+to a new hash. There's no guarantee that future attacks on SHA-1 won't
+be published in the future, and those attacks may not have viable
+mitigations.
+
+If SHA-1 and its variants were to be truly broken, Git's hash function
+could not be considered cryptographically secure any more. This would
+impact the communication of hash values because we could not trust
+that a given hash value represented the known good version of content
+that the speaker intended.
SHA-1 still possesses the other properties such as fast object lookup
and safe error checking, but other hash functions are equally suitable
@@ -40,14 +59,11 @@ that are believed to be cryptographically secure.
Goals
-----
-Where NewHash is a strong 256-bit hash function to replace SHA-1 (see
-"Selection of a New Hash", below):
-
-1. The transition to NewHash can be done one local repository at a time.
+1. The transition to SHA-256 can be done one local repository at a time.
a. Requiring no action by any other party.
- b. A NewHash repository can communicate with SHA-1 Git servers
+ b. A SHA-256 repository can communicate with SHA-1 Git servers
(push/fetch).
- c. Users can use SHA-1 and NewHash identifiers for objects
+ c. Users can use SHA-1 and SHA-256 identifiers for objects
interchangeably (see "Object names on the command line", below).
d. New signed objects make use of a stronger hash function than
SHA-1 for their security guarantees.
@@ -60,7 +76,7 @@ Where NewHash is a strong 256-bit hash function to replace SHA-1 (see
Non-Goals
---------
-1. Add NewHash support to Git protocol. This is valuable and the
+1. Add SHA-256 support to Git protocol. This is valuable and the
logical next step but it is out of scope for this initial design.
2. Transparently improving the security of existing SHA-1 signed
objects.
@@ -68,26 +84,26 @@ Non-Goals
repository.
4. Taking the opportunity to fix other bugs in Git's formats and
protocols.
-5. Shallow clones and fetches into a NewHash repository. (This will
- change when we add NewHash support to Git protocol.)
-6. Skip fetching some submodules of a project into a NewHash
- repository. (This also depends on NewHash support in Git
+5. Shallow clones and fetches into a SHA-256 repository. (This will
+ change when we add SHA-256 support to Git protocol.)
+6. Skip fetching some submodules of a project into a SHA-256
+ repository. (This also depends on SHA-256 support in Git
protocol.)
Overview
--------
We introduce a new repository format extension. Repositories with this
-extension enabled use NewHash instead of SHA-1 to name their objects.
+extension enabled use SHA-256 instead of SHA-1 to name their objects.
This affects both object names and object content --- both the names
of objects and all references to other objects within an object are
switched to the new hash function.
-NewHash repositories cannot be read by older versions of Git.
+SHA-256 repositories cannot be read by older versions of Git.
-Alongside the packfile, a NewHash repository stores a bidirectional
-mapping between NewHash and SHA-1 object names. The mapping is generated
+Alongside the packfile, a SHA-256 repository stores a bidirectional
+mapping between SHA-256 and SHA-1 object names. The mapping is generated
locally and can be verified using "git fsck". Object lookups use this
-mapping to allow naming objects using either their SHA-1 and NewHash names
+mapping to allow naming objects using either their SHA-1 and SHA-256 names
interchangeably.
"git cat-file" and "git hash-object" gain options to display an object
@@ -97,7 +113,7 @@ object database so that they can be named using the appropriate name
(using the bidirectional hash mapping).
Fetches from a SHA-1 based server convert the fetched objects into
-NewHash form and record the mapping in the bidirectional mapping table
+SHA-256 form and record the mapping in the bidirectional mapping table
(see below for details). Pushes to a SHA-1 based server convert the
objects being pushed into sha1 form so the server does not have to be
aware of the hash function the client is using.
@@ -106,20 +122,25 @@ Detailed Design
---------------
Repository format extension
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-A NewHash repository uses repository format version `1` (see
+A SHA-256 repository uses repository format version `1` (see
Documentation/technical/repository-version.txt) with extensions
`objectFormat` and `compatObjectFormat`:
[core]
repositoryFormatVersion = 1
[extensions]
- objectFormat = newhash
+ objectFormat = sha256
compatObjectFormat = sha1
-Specifying a repository format extension ensures that versions of Git
-not aware of NewHash do not try to operate on these repositories,
-instead producing an error message:
+The combination of setting `core.repositoryFormatVersion=1` and
+populating `extensions.*` ensures that all versions of Git later than
+`v0.99.9l` will die instead of trying to operate on the SHA-256
+repository, instead producing an error message.
+ # Between v0.99.9l and v2.7.0
+ $ git status
+ fatal: Expected git repo version <= 0, found 1
+ # After v2.7.0
$ git status
fatal: unknown repository extensions found:
objectformat
@@ -131,36 +152,36 @@ repository extensions.
Object names
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Objects can be named by their 40 hexadecimal digit sha1-name or 64
-hexadecimal digit newhash-name, plus names derived from those (see
+hexadecimal digit sha256-name, plus names derived from those (see
gitrevisions(7)).
The sha1-name of an object is the SHA-1 of the concatenation of its
type, length, a nul byte, and the object's sha1-content. This is the
traditional <sha1> used in Git to name objects.
-The newhash-name of an object is the NewHash of the concatenation of its
-type, length, a nul byte, and the object's newhash-content.
+The sha256-name of an object is the SHA-256 of the concatenation of its
+type, length, a nul byte, and the object's sha256-content.
Object format
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The content as a byte sequence of a tag, commit, or tree object named
-by sha1 and newhash differ because an object named by newhash-name refers to
-other objects by their newhash-names and an object named by sha1-name
+by sha1 and sha256 differ because an object named by sha256-name refers to
+other objects by their sha256-names and an object named by sha1-name
refers to other objects by their sha1-names.
-The newhash-content of an object is the same as its sha1-content, except
-that objects referenced by the object are named using their newhash-names
+The sha256-content of an object is the same as its sha1-content, except
+that objects referenced by the object are named using their sha256-names
instead of sha1-names. Because a blob object does not refer to any
-other object, its sha1-content and newhash-content are the same.
+other object, its sha1-content and sha256-content are the same.
-The format allows round-trip conversion between newhash-content and
+The format allows round-trip conversion between sha256-content and
sha1-content.
Object storage
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Loose objects use zlib compression and packed objects use the packed
format described in Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt, just like
-today. The content that is compressed and stored uses newhash-content
+today. The content that is compressed and stored uses sha256-content
instead of sha1-content.
Pack index
@@ -231,10 +252,10 @@ network byte order):
up to and not including the table of CRC32 values.
- Zero or more NUL bytes.
- The trailer consists of the following:
- - A copy of the 20-byte NewHash checksum at the end of the
+ - A copy of the 20-byte SHA-256 checksum at the end of the
corresponding packfile.
- - 20-byte NewHash checksum of all of the above.
+ - 20-byte SHA-256 checksum of all of the above.
Loose object index
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -242,7 +263,7 @@ A new file $GIT_OBJECT_DIR/loose-object-idx contains information about
all loose objects. Its format is
# loose-object-idx
- (newhash-name SP sha1-name LF)*
+ (sha256-name SP sha1-name LF)*
where the object names are in hexadecimal format. The file is not
sorted.
@@ -268,8 +289,8 @@ To remove entries (e.g. in "git pack-refs" or "git-prune"):
Translation table
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The index files support a bidirectional mapping between sha1-names
-and newhash-names. The lookup proceeds similarly to ordinary object
-lookups. For example, to convert a sha1-name to a newhash-name:
+and sha256-names. The lookup proceeds similarly to ordinary object
+lookups. For example, to convert a sha1-name to a sha256-name:
1. Look for the object in idx files. If a match is present in the
idx's sorted list of truncated sha1-names, then:
@@ -277,8 +298,8 @@ lookups. For example, to convert a sha1-name to a newhash-name:
name order mapping.
b. Read the corresponding entry in the full sha1-name table to
verify we found the right object. If it is, then
- c. Read the corresponding entry in the full newhash-name table.
- That is the object's newhash-name.
+ c. Read the corresponding entry in the full sha256-name table.
+ That is the object's sha256-name.
2. Check for a loose object. Read lines from loose-object-idx until
we find a match.
@@ -294,25 +315,25 @@ for all objects in the object store.
Reading an object's sha1-content
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The sha1-content of an object can be read by converting all newhash-names
-its newhash-content references to sha1-names using the translation table.
+The sha1-content of an object can be read by converting all sha256-names
+its sha256-content references to sha1-names using the translation table.
Fetch
~~~~~
Fetching from a SHA-1 based server requires translating between SHA-1
-and NewHash based representations on the fly.
+and SHA-256 based representations on the fly.
SHA-1s named in the ref advertisement that are present on the client
-can be translated to NewHash and looked up as local objects using the
+can be translated to SHA-256 and looked up as local objects using the
translation table.
Negotiation proceeds as today. Any "have"s generated locally are
converted to SHA-1 before being sent to the server, and SHA-1s
-mentioned by the server are converted to NewHash when looking them up
+mentioned by the server are converted to SHA-256 when looking them up
locally.
After negotiation, the server sends a packfile containing the
-requested objects. We convert the packfile to NewHash format using
+requested objects. We convert the packfile to SHA-256 format using
the following steps:
1. index-pack: inflate each object in the packfile and compute its
@@ -327,12 +348,12 @@ the following steps:
(This list only contains objects reachable from the "wants". If the
pack from the server contained additional extraneous objects, then
they will be discarded.)
-3. convert to newhash: open a new (newhash) packfile. Read the topologically
+3. convert to sha256: open a new (sha256) packfile. Read the topologically
sorted list just generated. For each object, inflate its
- sha1-content, convert to newhash-content, and write it to the newhash
- pack. Record the new sha1<->newhash mapping entry for use in the idx.
+ sha1-content, convert to sha256-content, and write it to the sha256
+ pack. Record the new sha1<->sha256 mapping entry for use in the idx.
4. sort: reorder entries in the new pack to match the order of objects
- in the pack the server generated and include blobs. Write a newhash idx
+ in the pack the server generated and include blobs. Write a sha256 idx
file
5. clean up: remove the SHA-1 based pack file, index, and
topologically sorted list obtained from the server in steps 1
@@ -364,16 +385,16 @@ send-pack.
Signed Commits
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-We add a new field "gpgsig-newhash" to the commit object format to allow
+We add a new field "gpgsig-sha256" to the commit object format to allow
signing commits without relying on SHA-1. It is similar to the
-existing "gpgsig" field. Its signed payload is the newhash-content of the
-commit object with any "gpgsig" and "gpgsig-newhash" fields removed.
+existing "gpgsig" field. Its signed payload is the sha256-content of the
+commit object with any "gpgsig" and "gpgsig-sha256" fields removed.
This means commits can be signed
1. using SHA-1 only, as in existing signed commit objects
-2. using both SHA-1 and NewHash, by using both gpgsig-newhash and gpgsig
+2. using both SHA-1 and SHA-256, by using both gpgsig-sha256 and gpgsig
fields.
-3. using only NewHash, by only using the gpgsig-newhash field.
+3. using only SHA-256, by only using the gpgsig-sha256 field.
Old versions of "git verify-commit" can verify the gpgsig signature in
cases (1) and (2) without modifications and view case (3) as an
@@ -381,24 +402,24 @@ ordinary unsigned commit.
Signed Tags
~~~~~~~~~~~
-We add a new field "gpgsig-newhash" to the tag object format to allow
+We add a new field "gpgsig-sha256" to the tag object format to allow
signing tags without relying on SHA-1. Its signed payload is the
-newhash-content of the tag with its gpgsig-newhash field and "-----BEGIN PGP
+sha256-content of the tag with its gpgsig-sha256 field and "-----BEGIN PGP
SIGNATURE-----" delimited in-body signature removed.
This means tags can be signed
1. using SHA-1 only, as in existing signed tag objects
-2. using both SHA-1 and NewHash, by using gpgsig-newhash and an in-body
+2. using both SHA-1 and SHA-256, by using gpgsig-sha256 and an in-body
signature.
-3. using only NewHash, by only using the gpgsig-newhash field.
+3. using only SHA-256, by only using the gpgsig-sha256 field.
Mergetag embedding
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The mergetag field in the sha1-content of a commit contains the
sha1-content of a tag that was merged by that commit.
-The mergetag field in the newhash-content of the same commit contains the
-newhash-content of the same tag.
+The mergetag field in the sha256-content of the same commit contains the
+sha256-content of the same tag.
Submodules
~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -473,7 +494,7 @@ Caveats
-------
Invalid objects
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The conversion from sha1-content to newhash-content retains any
+The conversion from sha1-content to sha256-content retains any
brokenness in the original object (e.g., tree entry modes encoded with
leading 0, tree objects whose paths are not sorted correctly, and
commit objects without an author or committer). This is a deliberate
@@ -492,7 +513,7 @@ allow lifting this restriction.
Alternates
~~~~~~~~~~
-For the same reason, a newhash repository cannot borrow objects from a
+For the same reason, a sha256 repository cannot borrow objects from a
sha1 repository using objects/info/alternates or
$GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_REPOSITORIES.
@@ -500,20 +521,20 @@ git notes
~~~~~~~~~
The "git notes" tool annotates objects using their sha1-name as key.
This design does not describe a way to migrate notes trees to use
-newhash-names. That migration is expected to happen separately (for
+sha256-names. That migration is expected to happen separately (for
example using a file at the root of the notes tree to describe which
hash it uses).
Server-side cost
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Until Git protocol gains NewHash support, using NewHash based storage
+Until Git protocol gains SHA-256 support, using SHA-256 based storage
on public-facing Git servers is strongly discouraged. Once Git
-protocol gains NewHash support, NewHash based servers are likely not
+protocol gains SHA-256 support, SHA-256 based servers are likely not
to support SHA-1 compatibility, to avoid what may be a very expensive
hash reencode during clone and to encourage peers to modernize.
The design described here allows fetches by SHA-1 clients of a
-personal NewHash repository because it's not much more difficult than
+personal SHA-256 repository because it's not much more difficult than
allowing pushes from that repository. This support needs to be guarded
by a configuration option --- servers like git.kernel.org that serve a
large number of clients would not be expected to bear that cost.
@@ -523,7 +544,7 @@ Meaning of signatures
The signed payload for signed commits and tags does not explicitly
name the hash used to identify objects. If some day Git adopts a new
hash function with the same length as the current SHA-1 (40
-hexadecimal digit) or NewHash (64 hexadecimal digit) objects then the
+hexadecimal digit) or SHA-256 (64 hexadecimal digit) objects then the
intent behind the PGP signed payload in an object signature is
unclear:
@@ -538,7 +559,7 @@ Does this mean Git v2.12.0 is the commit with sha1-name
e7e07d5a4fcc2a203d9873968ad3e6bd4d7419d7 or the commit with
new-40-digit-hash-name e7e07d5a4fcc2a203d9873968ad3e6bd4d7419d7?
-Fortunately NewHash and SHA-1 have different lengths. If Git starts
+Fortunately SHA-256 and SHA-1 have different lengths. If Git starts
using another hash with the same length to name objects, then it will
need to change the format of signed payloads using that hash to
address this issue.
@@ -550,24 +571,24 @@ supports four different modes of operation:
1. ("dark launch") Treat object names input by the user as SHA-1 and
convert any object names written to output to SHA-1, but store
- objects using NewHash. This allows users to test the code with no
+ objects using SHA-256. This allows users to test the code with no
visible behavior change except for performance. This allows
allows running even tests that assume the SHA-1 hash function, to
sanity-check the behavior of the new mode.
- 2. ("early transition") Allow both SHA-1 and NewHash object names in
+ 2. ("early transition") Allow both SHA-1 and SHA-256 object names in
input. Any object names written to output use SHA-1. This allows
users to continue to make use of SHA-1 to communicate with peers
(e.g. by email) that have not migrated yet and prepares for mode 3.
- 3. ("late transition") Allow both SHA-1 and NewHash object names in
- input. Any object names written to output use NewHash. In this
+ 3. ("late transition") Allow both SHA-1 and SHA-256 object names in
+ input. Any object names written to output use SHA-256. In this
mode, users are using a more secure object naming method by
default. The disruption is minimal as long as most of their peers
are in mode 2 or mode 3.
4. ("post-transition") Treat object names input by the user as
- NewHash and write output using NewHash. This is safer than mode 3
+ SHA-256 and write output using SHA-256. This is safer than mode 3
because there is less risk that input is incorrectly interpreted
using the wrong hash function.
@@ -577,27 +598,31 @@ The user can also explicitly specify which format to use for a
particular revision specifier and for output, overriding the mode. For
example:
-git --output-format=sha1 log abac87a^{sha1}..f787cac^{newhash}
+git --output-format=sha1 log abac87a^{sha1}..f787cac^{sha256}
-Selection of a New Hash
------------------------
+Choice of Hash
+--------------
In early 2005, around the time that Git was written, Xiaoyun Wang,
Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu announced an attack finding SHA-1
collisions in 2^69 operations. In August they published details.
Luckily, no practical demonstrations of a collision in full SHA-1 were
published until 10 years later, in 2017.
-The hash function NewHash to replace SHA-1 should be stronger than
-SHA-1 was: we would like it to be trustworthy and useful in practice
-for at least 10 years.
+Git v2.13.0 and later subsequently moved to a hardened SHA-1
+implementation by default that mitigates the SHAttered attack, but
+SHA-1 is still believed to be weak.
+
+The hash to replace this hardened SHA-1 should be stronger than SHA-1
+was: we would like it to be trustworthy and useful in practice for at
+least 10 years.
Some other relevant properties:
1. A 256-bit hash (long enough to match common security practice; not
excessively long to hurt performance and disk usage).
-2. High quality implementations should be widely available (e.g. in
- OpenSSL).
+2. High quality implementations should be widely available (e.g., in
+ OpenSSL and Apple CommonCrypto).
3. The hash function's properties should match Git's needs (e.g. Git
requires collision and 2nd preimage resistance and does not require
@@ -606,14 +631,13 @@ Some other relevant properties:
4. As a tiebreaker, the hash should be fast to compute (fortunately
many contenders are faster than SHA-1).
-Some hashes under consideration are SHA-256, SHA-512/256, SHA-256x16,
-K12, and BLAKE2bp-256.
+We choose SHA-256.
Transition plan
---------------
Some initial steps can be implemented independently of one another:
- adding a hash function API (vtable)
-- teaching fsck to tolerate the gpgsig-newhash field
+- teaching fsck to tolerate the gpgsig-sha256 field
- excluding gpgsig-* from the fields copied by "git commit --amend"
- annotating tests that depend on SHA-1 values with a SHA1 test
prerequisite
@@ -640,7 +664,7 @@ Next comes introduction of compatObjectFormat:
- adding appropriate index entries when adding a new object to the
object store
- --output-format option
-- ^{sha1} and ^{newhash} revision notation
+- ^{sha1} and ^{sha256} revision notation
- configuration to specify default input and output format (see
"Object names on the command line" above)
@@ -648,7 +672,7 @@ The next step is supporting fetches and pushes to SHA-1 repositories:
- allow pushes to a repository using the compat format
- generate a topologically sorted list of the SHA-1 names of fetched
objects
-- convert the fetched packfile to newhash format and generate an idx
+- convert the fetched packfile to sha256 format and generate an idx
file
- re-sort to match the order of objects in the fetched packfile
@@ -656,30 +680,30 @@ The infrastructure supporting fetch also allows converting an existing
repository. In converted repositories and new clones, end users can
gain support for the new hash function without any visible change in
behavior (see "dark launch" in the "Object names on the command line"
-section). In particular this allows users to verify NewHash signatures
+section). In particular this allows users to verify SHA-256 signatures
on objects in the repository, and it should ensure the transition code
is stable in production in preparation for using it more widely.
Over time projects would encourage their users to adopt the "early
transition" and then "late transition" modes to take advantage of the
-new, more futureproof NewHash object names.
+new, more futureproof SHA-256 object names.
When objectFormat and compatObjectFormat are both set, commands
-generating signatures would generate both SHA-1 and NewHash signatures
+generating signatures would generate both SHA-1 and SHA-256 signatures
by default to support both new and old users.
-In projects using NewHash heavily, users could be encouraged to adopt
+In projects using SHA-256 heavily, users could be encouraged to adopt
the "post-transition" mode to avoid accidentally making implicit use
of SHA-1 object names.
Once a critical mass of users have upgraded to a version of Git that
-can verify NewHash signatures and have converted their existing
+can verify SHA-256 signatures and have converted their existing
repositories to support verifying them, we can add support for a
-setting to generate only NewHash signatures. This is expected to be at
+setting to generate only SHA-256 signatures. This is expected to be at
least a year later.
That is also a good moment to advertise the ability to convert
-repositories to use NewHash only, stripping out all SHA-1 related
+repositories to use SHA-256 only, stripping out all SHA-1 related
metadata. This improves performance by eliminating translation
overhead and security by avoiding the possibility of accidentally
relying on the safety of SHA-1.
@@ -718,16 +742,16 @@ using the old hash function.
Signed objects with multiple hashes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Instead of introducing the gpgsig-newhash field in commit and tag objects
-for newhash-content based signatures, an earlier version of this design
-added "hash newhash <newhash-name>" fields to strengthen the existing
+Instead of introducing the gpgsig-sha256 field in commit and tag objects
+for sha256-content based signatures, an earlier version of this design
+added "hash sha256 <sha256-name>" fields to strengthen the existing
sha1-content based signatures.
In other words, a single signature was used to attest to the object
content using both hash functions. This had some advantages:
* Using one signature instead of two speeds up the signing process.
* Having one signed payload with both hashes allows the signer to
- attest to the sha1-name and newhash-name referring to the same object.
+ attest to the sha1-name and sha256-name referring to the same object.
* All users consume the same signature. Broken signatures are likely
to be detected quickly using current versions of git.
@@ -736,11 +760,11 @@ However, it also came with disadvantages:
objects it references, even after the transition is complete and
translation table is no longer needed for anything else. To support
this, the design added fields such as "hash sha1 tree <sha1-name>"
- and "hash sha1 parent <sha1-name>" to the newhash-content of a signed
+ and "hash sha1 parent <sha1-name>" to the sha256-content of a signed
commit, complicating the conversion process.
* Allowing signed objects without a sha1 (for after the transition is
complete) complicated the design further, requiring a "nohash sha1"
- field to suppress including "hash sha1" fields in the newhash-content
+ field to suppress including "hash sha1" fields in the sha256-content
and signed payload.
Lazily populated translation table
@@ -748,7 +772,7 @@ Lazily populated translation table
Some of the work of building the translation table could be deferred to
push time, but that would significantly complicate and slow down pushes.
Calculating the sha1-name at object creation time at the same time it is
-being streamed to disk and having its newhash-name calculated should be
+being streamed to disk and having its sha256-name calculated should be
an acceptable cost.
Document History
@@ -790,6 +814,12 @@ Incorporated suggestions from jonathantanmy and sbeller:
* avoid loose object overhead by packing more aggressively in
"git gc --auto"
+Later history:
+
+ See the history of this file in git.git for the history of subsequent
+ edits. This document history is no longer being maintained as it
+ would now be superfluous to the commit log
+
[1] http://public-inbox.org/git/CA+55aFzJtejiCjV0e43+9oR3QuJK2PiFiLQemytoLpyJWe6P9w@mail.gmail.com/
[2] http://public-inbox.org/git/CA+55aFz+gkAsDZ24zmePQuEs1XPS9BP_s8O7Q4wQ7LV7X5-oDA@mail.gmail.com/
[3] http://public-inbox.org/git/20170306084353.nrns455dvkdsfgo5@sigill.intra.peff.net/
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt b/Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt
index 64f49d0bbb..9c5b6f0fac 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt
@@ -338,11 +338,11 @@ server advertises capability `allow-tip-sha1-in-want` or
request_end
request_end = "0000" / "done"
- want_list = PKT-LINE(want NUL cap_list LF)
+ want_list = PKT-LINE(want SP cap_list LF)
*(want_pkt)
want_pkt = PKT-LINE(want LF)
want = "want" SP id
- cap_list = *(SP capability) SP
+ cap_list = capability *(SP capability)
have_list = *PKT-LINE("have" SP id LF)
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt b/Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt
index 8e5bf60be3..70a99fd142 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt
@@ -36,6 +36,98 @@ Git pack format
- The trailer records 20-byte SHA-1 checksum of all of the above.
+=== Object types
+
+Valid object types are:
+
+- OBJ_COMMIT (1)
+- OBJ_TREE (2)
+- OBJ_BLOB (3)
+- OBJ_TAG (4)
+- OBJ_OFS_DELTA (6)
+- OBJ_REF_DELTA (7)
+
+Type 5 is reserved for future expansion. Type 0 is invalid.
+
+=== Deltified representation
+
+Conceptually there are only four object types: commit, tree, tag and
+blob. However to save space, an object could be stored as a "delta" of
+another "base" object. These representations are assigned new types
+ofs-delta and ref-delta, which is only valid in a pack file.
+
+Both ofs-delta and ref-delta store the "delta" to be applied to
+another object (called 'base object') to reconstruct the object. The
+difference between them is, ref-delta directly encodes 20-byte base
+object name. If the base object is in the same pack, ofs-delta encodes
+the offset of the base object in the pack instead.
+
+The base object could also be deltified if it's in the same pack.
+Ref-delta can also refer to an object outside the pack (i.e. the
+so-called "thin pack"). When stored on disk however, the pack should
+be self contained to avoid cyclic dependency.
+
+The delta data is a sequence of instructions to reconstruct an object
+from the base object. If the base object is deltified, it must be
+converted to canonical form first. Each instruction appends more and
+more data to the target object until it's complete. There are two
+supported instructions so far: one for copy a byte range from the
+source object and one for inserting new data embedded in the
+instruction itself.
+
+Each instruction has variable length. Instruction type is determined
+by the seventh bit of the first octet. The following diagrams follow
+the convention in RFC 1951 (Deflate compressed data format).
+
+==== Instruction to copy from base object
+
+ +----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------+-------+-------+
+ | 1xxxxxxx | offset1 | offset2 | offset3 | offset4 | size1 | size2 | size3 |
+ +----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------+-------+-------+
+
+This is the instruction format to copy a byte range from the source
+object. It encodes the offset to copy from and the number of bytes to
+copy. Offset and size are in little-endian order.
+
+All offset and size bytes are optional. This is to reduce the
+instruction size when encoding small offsets or sizes. The first seven
+bits in the first octet determines which of the next seven octets is
+present. If bit zero is set, offset1 is present. If bit one is set
+offset2 is present and so on.
+
+Note that a more compact instruction does not change offset and size
+encoding. For example, if only offset2 is omitted like below, offset3
+still contains bits 16-23. It does not become offset2 and contains
+bits 8-15 even if it's right next to offset1.
+
+ +----------+---------+---------+
+ | 10000101 | offset1 | offset3 |
+ +----------+---------+---------+
+
+In its most compact form, this instruction only takes up one byte
+(0x80) with both offset and size omitted, which will have default
+values zero. There is another exception: size zero is automatically
+converted to 0x10000.
+
+==== Instruction to add new data
+
+ +----------+============+
+ | 0xxxxxxx | data |
+ +----------+============+
+
+This is the instruction to construct target object without the base
+object. The following data is appended to the target object. The first
+seven bits of the first octet determines the size of data in
+bytes. The size must be non-zero.
+
+==== Reserved instruction
+
+ +----------+============
+ | 00000000 |
+ +----------+============
+
+This is the instruction reserved for future expansion.
+
== Original (version 1) pack-*.idx files have the following format:
- The header consists of 256 4-byte network byte order
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt b/Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt
index 7fee6b780a..6ac774d5f6 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt
@@ -50,7 +50,8 @@ Each Extra Parameter takes the form of `<key>=<value>` or `<key>`.
Servers that receive any such Extra Parameters MUST ignore all
unrecognized keys. Currently, the only Extra Parameter recognized is
-"version=1".
+"version" with a value of '1' or '2'. See protocol-v2.txt for more
+information on protocol version 2.
Git Transport
-------------
@@ -284,7 +285,9 @@ information is sent back to the client in the next step.
The client can optionally request that pack-objects omit various
objects from the packfile using one of several filtering techniques.
These are intended for use with partial clone and partial fetch
-operations. See `rev-list` for possible "filter-spec" values.
+operations. An object that does not meet a filter-spec value is
+omitted unless explicitly requested in a 'want' line. See `rev-list`
+for possible filter-spec values.
Once all the 'want's and 'shallow's (and optional 'deepen') are
transferred, clients MUST send a flush-pkt, to tell the server side
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt b/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
index 0bed2472c8..1ef66bd788 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/partial-clone.txt
@@ -69,24 +69,24 @@ Design Details
- A new pack-protocol capability "filter" is added to the fetch-pack and
upload-pack negotiation.
-
- This uses the existing capability discovery mechanism.
- See "filter" in Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt.
++
+This uses the existing capability discovery mechanism.
+See "filter" in Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt.
- Clients pass a "filter-spec" to clone and fetch which is passed to the
server to request filtering during packfile construction.
-
- There are various filters available to accommodate different situations.
- See "--filter=<filter-spec>" in Documentation/rev-list-options.txt.
++
+There are various filters available to accommodate different situations.
+See "--filter=<filter-spec>" in Documentation/rev-list-options.txt.
- On the server pack-objects applies the requested filter-spec as it
creates "filtered" packfiles for the client.
-
- These filtered packfiles are *incomplete* in the traditional sense because
- they may contain objects that reference objects not contained in the
- packfile and that the client doesn't already have. For example, the
- filtered packfile may contain trees or tags that reference missing blobs
- or commits that reference missing trees.
++
+These filtered packfiles are *incomplete* in the traditional sense because
+they may contain objects that reference objects not contained in the
+packfile and that the client doesn't already have. For example, the
+filtered packfile may contain trees or tags that reference missing blobs
+or commits that reference missing trees.
- On the client these incomplete packfiles are marked as "promisor packfiles"
and treated differently by various commands.
@@ -104,47 +104,47 @@ Handling Missing Objects
to repository corruption. To differentiate these cases, the local
repository specially indicates such filtered packfiles obtained from the
promisor remote as "promisor packfiles".
-
- These promisor packfiles consist of a "<name>.promisor" file with
- arbitrary contents (like the "<name>.keep" files), in addition to
- their "<name>.pack" and "<name>.idx" files.
++
+These promisor packfiles consist of a "<name>.promisor" file with
+arbitrary contents (like the "<name>.keep" files), in addition to
+their "<name>.pack" and "<name>.idx" files.
- The local repository considers a "promisor object" to be an object that
it knows (to the best of its ability) that the promisor remote has promised
that it has, either because the local repository has that object in one of
its promisor packfiles, or because another promisor object refers to it.
-
- When Git encounters a missing object, Git can see if it a promisor object
- and handle it appropriately. If not, Git can report a corruption.
-
- This means that there is no need for the client to explicitly maintain an
- expensive-to-modify list of missing objects.[a]
++
+When Git encounters a missing object, Git can see if it a promisor object
+and handle it appropriately. If not, Git can report a corruption.
++
+This means that there is no need for the client to explicitly maintain an
+expensive-to-modify list of missing objects.[a]
- Since almost all Git code currently expects any referenced object to be
present locally and because we do not want to force every command to do
a dry-run first, a fallback mechanism is added to allow Git to attempt
to dynamically fetch missing objects from the promisor remote.
-
- When the normal object lookup fails to find an object, Git invokes
- fetch-object to try to get the object from the server and then retry
- the object lookup. This allows objects to be "faulted in" without
- complicated prediction algorithms.
-
- For efficiency reasons, no check as to whether the missing object is
- actually a promisor object is performed.
-
- Dynamic object fetching tends to be slow as objects are fetched one at
- a time.
++
+When the normal object lookup fails to find an object, Git invokes
+fetch-object to try to get the object from the server and then retry
+the object lookup. This allows objects to be "faulted in" without
+complicated prediction algorithms.
++
+For efficiency reasons, no check as to whether the missing object is
+actually a promisor object is performed.
++
+Dynamic object fetching tends to be slow as objects are fetched one at
+a time.
- `checkout` (and any other command using `unpack-trees`) has been taught
to bulk pre-fetch all required missing blobs in a single batch.
- `rev-list` has been taught to print missing objects.
-
- This can be used by other commands to bulk prefetch objects.
- For example, a "git log -p A..B" may internally want to first do
- something like "git rev-list --objects --quiet --missing=print A..B"
- and prefetch those objects in bulk.
++
+This can be used by other commands to bulk prefetch objects.
+For example, a "git log -p A..B" may internally want to first do
+something like "git rev-list --objects --quiet --missing=print A..B"
+and prefetch those objects in bulk.
- `fsck` has been updated to be fully aware of promisor objects.
@@ -154,11 +154,11 @@ Handling Missing Objects
- The global variable "fetch_if_missing" is used to control whether an
object lookup will attempt to dynamically fetch a missing object or
report an error.
-
- We are not happy with this global variable and would like to remove it,
- but that requires significant refactoring of the object code to pass an
- additional flag. We hope that concurrent efforts to add an ODB API can
- encompass this.
++
+We are not happy with this global variable and would like to remove it,
+but that requires significant refactoring of the object code to pass an
+additional flag. We hope that concurrent efforts to add an ODB API can
+encompass this.
Fetching Missing Objects
@@ -168,10 +168,10 @@ Fetching Missing Objects
transport_fetch_refs(), setting a new transport option
TRANS_OPT_NO_DEPENDENTS to indicate that only the objects themselves are
desired, not any object that they refer to.
-
- Because some transports invoke fetch_pack() in the same process, fetch_pack()
- has been updated to not use any object flags when the corresponding argument
- (no_dependents) is set.
++
+Because some transports invoke fetch_pack() in the same process, fetch_pack()
+has been updated to not use any object flags when the corresponding argument
+(no_dependents) is set.
- The local repository sends a request with the hashes of all requested
objects as "want" lines, and does not perform any packfile negotiation.
@@ -187,13 +187,13 @@ Current Limitations
- The remote used for a partial clone (or the first partial fetch
following a regular clone) is marked as the "promisor remote".
-
- We are currently limited to a single promisor remote and only that
- remote may be used for subsequent partial fetches.
-
- We accept this limitation because we believe initial users of this
- feature will be using it on repositories with a strong single central
- server.
++
+We are currently limited to a single promisor remote and only that
+remote may be used for subsequent partial fetches.
++
+We accept this limitation because we believe initial users of this
+feature will be using it on repositories with a strong single central
+server.
- Dynamic object fetching will only ask the promisor remote for missing
objects. We assume that the promisor remote has a complete view of the
@@ -221,13 +221,13 @@ Future Work
- Allow more than one promisor remote and define a strategy for fetching
missing objects from specific promisor remotes or of iterating over the
set of promisor remotes until a missing object is found.
-
- A user might want to have multiple geographically-close cache servers
- for fetching missing blobs while continuing to do filtered `git-fetch`
- commands from the central server, for example.
-
- Or the user might want to work in a triangular work flow with multiple
- promisor remotes that each have an incomplete view of the repository.
++
+A user might want to have multiple geographically-close cache servers
+for fetching missing blobs while continuing to do filtered `git-fetch`
+commands from the central server, for example.
++
+Or the user might want to work in a triangular work flow with multiple
+promisor remotes that each have an incomplete view of the repository.
- Allow repack to work on promisor packfiles (while keeping them distinct
from non-promisor packfiles).
@@ -238,25 +238,25 @@ Future Work
- Investigate use of a long-running process to dynamically fetch a series
of objects, such as proposed in [5,6] to reduce process startup and
overhead costs.
-
- It would be nice if pack protocol V2 could allow that long-running
- process to make a series of requests over a single long-running
- connection.
++
+It would be nice if pack protocol V2 could allow that long-running
+process to make a series of requests over a single long-running
+connection.
- Investigate pack protocol V2 to avoid the info/refs broadcast on
each connection with the server to dynamically fetch missing objects.
- Investigate the need to handle loose promisor objects.
-
- Objects in promisor packfiles are allowed to reference missing objects
- that can be dynamically fetched from the server. An assumption was
- made that loose objects are only created locally and therefore should
- not reference a missing object. We may need to revisit that assumption
- if, for example, we dynamically fetch a missing tree and store it as a
- loose object rather than a single object packfile.
-
- This does not necessarily mean we need to mark loose objects as promisor;
- it may be sufficient to relax the object lookup or is-promisor functions.
++
+Objects in promisor packfiles are allowed to reference missing objects
+that can be dynamically fetched from the server. An assumption was
+made that loose objects are only created locally and therefore should
+not reference a missing object. We may need to revisit that assumption
+if, for example, we dynamically fetch a missing tree and store it as a
+loose object rather than a single object packfile.
++
+This does not necessarily mean we need to mark loose objects as promisor;
+it may be sufficient to relax the object lookup or is-promisor functions.
Non-Tasks
@@ -265,13 +265,13 @@ Non-Tasks
- Every time the subject of "demand loading blobs" comes up it seems
that someone suggests that the server be allowed to "guess" and send
additional objects that may be related to the requested objects.
-
- No work has gone into actually doing that; we're just documenting that
- it is a common suggestion. We're not sure how it would work and have
- no plans to work on it.
-
- It is valid for the server to send more objects than requested (even
- for a dynamic object fetch), but we are not building on that.
++
+No work has gone into actually doing that; we're just documenting that
+it is a common suggestion. We're not sure how it would work and have
+no plans to work on it.
++
+It is valid for the server to send more objects than requested (even
+for a dynamic object fetch), but we are not building on that.
Footnotes
@@ -282,43 +282,43 @@ Footnotes
This would essentially be a sorted linear list of OIDs that the were
omitted by the server during a clone or subsequent fetches.
- This file would need to be loaded into memory on every object lookup.
- It would need to be read, updated, and re-written (like the .git/index)
- on every explicit "git fetch" command *and* on any dynamic object fetch.
+This file would need to be loaded into memory on every object lookup.
+It would need to be read, updated, and re-written (like the .git/index)
+on every explicit "git fetch" command *and* on any dynamic object fetch.
- The cost to read, update, and write this file could add significant
- overhead to every command if there are many missing objects. For example,
- if there are 100M missing blobs, this file would be at least 2GiB on disk.
+The cost to read, update, and write this file could add significant
+overhead to every command if there are many missing objects. For example,
+if there are 100M missing blobs, this file would be at least 2GiB on disk.
- With the "promisor" concept, we *infer* a missing object based upon the
- type of packfile that references it.
+With the "promisor" concept, we *infer* a missing object based upon the
+type of packfile that references it.
Related Links
-------------
-[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/git/issues/detail?id=2
- Chromium work item for: Partial Clone
+[0] https://crbug.com/git/2
+ Bug#2: Partial Clone
-[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170113155253.1644-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/
- Subject: [RFC] Add support for downloading blobs on demand
+[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170113155253.1644-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/ +
+ Subject: [RFC] Add support for downloading blobs on demand +
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:52:53 -0500
-[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/cover.1506714999.git.jonathantanmy@google.com/
- Subject: [PATCH 00/18] Partial clone (from clone to lazy fetch in 18 patches)
+[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/cover.1506714999.git.jonathantanmy@google.com/ +
+ Subject: [PATCH 00/18] Partial clone (from clone to lazy fetch in 18 patches) +
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:11:36 -0700
-[3] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170426221346.25337-1-jonathantanmy@google.com/
- Subject: Proposal for missing blob support in Git repos
+[3] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170426221346.25337-1-jonathantanmy@google.com/ +
+ Subject: Proposal for missing blob support in Git repos +
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:13:46 -0700
-[4] https://public-inbox.org/git/1488999039-37631-1-git-send-email-git@jeffhostetler.com/
- Subject: [PATCH 00/10] RFC Partial Clone and Fetch
+[4] https://public-inbox.org/git/1488999039-37631-1-git-send-email-git@jeffhostetler.com/ +
+ Subject: [PATCH 00/10] RFC Partial Clone and Fetch +
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 18:50:29 +0000
-[5] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170505152802.6724-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/
- Subject: [PATCH v7 00/10] refactor the filter process code into a reusable module
+[5] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170505152802.6724-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/ +
+ Subject: [PATCH v7 00/10] refactor the filter process code into a reusable module +
Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 11:27:52 -0400
-[6] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170714132651.170708-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/
- Subject: [RFC/PATCH v2 0/1] Add support for downloading blobs on demand
+[6] https://public-inbox.org/git/20170714132651.170708-1-benpeart@microsoft.com/ +
+ Subject: [RFC/PATCH v2 0/1] Add support for downloading blobs on demand +
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2017 09:26:50 -0400
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt b/Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..09e4e0273f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,439 @@
+ Git Wire Protocol, Version 2
+==============================
+
+This document presents a specification for a version 2 of Git's wire
+protocol. Protocol v2 will improve upon v1 in the following ways:
+
+ * Instead of multiple service names, multiple commands will be
+ supported by a single service
+ * Easily extendable as capabilities are moved into their own section
+ of the protocol, no longer being hidden behind a NUL byte and
+ limited by the size of a pkt-line
+ * Separate out other information hidden behind NUL bytes (e.g. agent
+ string as a capability and symrefs can be requested using 'ls-refs')
+ * Reference advertisement will be omitted unless explicitly requested
+ * ls-refs command to explicitly request some refs
+ * Designed with http and stateless-rpc in mind. With clear flush
+ semantics the http remote helper can simply act as a proxy
+
+In protocol v2 communication is command oriented. When first contacting a
+server a list of capabilities will advertised. Some of these capabilities
+will be commands which a client can request be executed. Once a command
+has completed, a client can reuse the connection and request that other
+commands be executed.
+
+ Packet-Line Framing
+---------------------
+
+All communication is done using packet-line framing, just as in v1. See
+`Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt` and
+`Documentation/technical/protocol-common.txt` for more information.
+
+In protocol v2 these special packets will have the following semantics:
+
+ * '0000' Flush Packet (flush-pkt) - indicates the end of a message
+ * '0001' Delimiter Packet (delim-pkt) - separates sections of a message
+
+ Initial Client Request
+------------------------
+
+In general a client can request to speak protocol v2 by sending
+`version=2` through the respective side-channel for the transport being
+used which inevitably sets `GIT_PROTOCOL`. More information can be
+found in `pack-protocol.txt` and `http-protocol.txt`. In all cases the
+response from the server is the capability advertisement.
+
+ Git Transport
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+When using the git:// transport, you can request to use protocol v2 by
+sending "version=2" as an extra parameter:
+
+ 003egit-upload-pack /project.git\0host=myserver.com\0\0version=2\0
+
+ SSH and File Transport
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+When using either the ssh:// or file:// transport, the GIT_PROTOCOL
+environment variable must be set explicitly to include "version=2".
+
+ HTTP Transport
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+When using the http:// or https:// transport a client makes a "smart"
+info/refs request as described in `http-protocol.txt` and requests that
+v2 be used by supplying "version=2" in the `Git-Protocol` header.
+
+ C: GET $GIT_URL/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack HTTP/1.0
+ C: Git-Protocol: version=2
+
+A v2 server would reply:
+
+ S: 200 OK
+ S: <Some headers>
+ S: ...
+ S:
+ S: 000eversion 2\n
+ S: <capability-advertisement>
+
+Subsequent requests are then made directly to the service
+`$GIT_URL/git-upload-pack`. (This works the same for git-receive-pack).
+
+ Capability Advertisement
+--------------------------
+
+A server which decides to communicate (based on a request from a client)
+using protocol version 2, notifies the client by sending a version string
+in its initial response followed by an advertisement of its capabilities.
+Each capability is a key with an optional value. Clients must ignore all
+unknown keys. Semantics of unknown values are left to the definition of
+each key. Some capabilities will describe commands which can be requested
+to be executed by the client.
+
+ capability-advertisement = protocol-version
+ capability-list
+ flush-pkt
+
+ protocol-version = PKT-LINE("version 2" LF)
+ capability-list = *capability
+ capability = PKT-LINE(key[=value] LF)
+
+ key = 1*(ALPHA | DIGIT | "-_")
+ value = 1*(ALPHA | DIGIT | " -_.,?\/{}[]()<>!@#$%^&*+=:;")
+
+ Command Request
+-----------------
+
+After receiving the capability advertisement, a client can then issue a
+request to select the command it wants with any particular capabilities
+or arguments. There is then an optional section where the client can
+provide any command specific parameters or queries. Only a single
+command can be requested at a time.
+
+ request = empty-request | command-request
+ empty-request = flush-pkt
+ command-request = command
+ capability-list
+ [command-args]
+ flush-pkt
+ command = PKT-LINE("command=" key LF)
+ command-args = delim-pkt
+ *command-specific-arg
+
+ command-specific-args are packet line framed arguments defined by
+ each individual command.
+
+The server will then check to ensure that the client's request is
+comprised of a valid command as well as valid capabilities which were
+advertised. If the request is valid the server will then execute the
+command. A server MUST wait till it has received the client's entire
+request before issuing a response. The format of the response is
+determined by the command being executed, but in all cases a flush-pkt
+indicates the end of the response.
+
+When a command has finished, and the client has received the entire
+response from the server, a client can either request that another
+command be executed or can terminate the connection. A client may
+optionally send an empty request consisting of just a flush-pkt to
+indicate that no more requests will be made.
+
+ Capabilities
+--------------
+
+There are two different types of capabilities: normal capabilities,
+which can be used to to convey information or alter the behavior of a
+request, and commands, which are the core actions that a client wants to
+perform (fetch, push, etc).
+
+Protocol version 2 is stateless by default. This means that all commands
+must only last a single round and be stateless from the perspective of the
+server side, unless the client has requested a capability indicating that
+state should be maintained by the server. Clients MUST NOT require state
+management on the server side in order to function correctly. This
+permits simple round-robin load-balancing on the server side, without
+needing to worry about state management.
+
+ agent
+~~~~~~~
+
+The server can advertise the `agent` capability with a value `X` (in the
+form `agent=X`) to notify the client that the server is running version
+`X`. The client may optionally send its own agent string by including
+the `agent` capability with a value `Y` (in the form `agent=Y`) in its
+request to the server (but it MUST NOT do so if the server did not
+advertise the agent capability). The `X` and `Y` strings may contain any
+printable ASCII characters except space (i.e., the byte range 32 < x <
+127), and are typically of the form "package/version" (e.g.,
+"git/1.8.3.1"). The agent strings are purely informative for statistics
+and debugging purposes, and MUST NOT be used to programmatically assume
+the presence or absence of particular features.
+
+ ls-refs
+~~~~~~~~~
+
+`ls-refs` is the command used to request a reference advertisement in v2.
+Unlike the current reference advertisement, ls-refs takes in arguments
+which can be used to limit the refs sent from the server.
+
+Additional features not supported in the base command will be advertised
+as the value of the command in the capability advertisement in the form
+of a space separated list of features: "<command>=<feature 1> <feature 2>"
+
+ls-refs takes in the following arguments:
+
+ symrefs
+ In addition to the object pointed by it, show the underlying ref
+ pointed by it when showing a symbolic ref.
+ peel
+ Show peeled tags.
+ ref-prefix <prefix>
+ When specified, only references having a prefix matching one of
+ the provided prefixes are displayed.
+
+The output of ls-refs is as follows:
+
+ output = *ref
+ flush-pkt
+ ref = PKT-LINE(obj-id SP refname *(SP ref-attribute) LF)
+ ref-attribute = (symref | peeled)
+ symref = "symref-target:" symref-target
+ peeled = "peeled:" obj-id
+
+ fetch
+~~~~~~~
+
+`fetch` is the command used to fetch a packfile in v2. It can be looked
+at as a modified version of the v1 fetch where the ref-advertisement is
+stripped out (since the `ls-refs` command fills that role) and the
+message format is tweaked to eliminate redundancies and permit easy
+addition of future extensions.
+
+Additional features not supported in the base command will be advertised
+as the value of the command in the capability advertisement in the form
+of a space separated list of features: "<command>=<feature 1> <feature 2>"
+
+A `fetch` request can take the following arguments:
+
+ want <oid>
+ Indicates to the server an object which the client wants to
+ retrieve. Wants can be anything and are not limited to
+ advertised objects.
+
+ have <oid>
+ Indicates to the server an object which the client has locally.
+ This allows the server to make a packfile which only contains
+ the objects that the client needs. Multiple 'have' lines can be
+ supplied.
+
+ done
+ Indicates to the server that negotiation should terminate (or
+ not even begin if performing a clone) and that the server should
+ use the information supplied in the request to construct the
+ packfile.
+
+ thin-pack
+ Request that a thin pack be sent, which is a pack with deltas
+ which reference base objects not contained within the pack (but
+ are known to exist at the receiving end). This can reduce the
+ network traffic significantly, but it requires the receiving end
+ to know how to "thicken" these packs by adding the missing bases
+ to the pack.
+
+ no-progress
+ Request that progress information that would normally be sent on
+ side-band channel 2, during the packfile transfer, should not be
+ sent. However, the side-band channel 3 is still used for error
+ responses.
+
+ include-tag
+ Request that annotated tags should be sent if the objects they
+ point to are being sent.
+
+ ofs-delta
+ Indicate that the client understands PACKv2 with delta referring
+ to its base by position in pack rather than by an oid. That is,
+ they can read OBJ_OFS_DELTA (ake type 6) in a packfile.
+
+If the 'shallow' feature is advertised the following arguments can be
+included in the clients request as well as the potential addition of the
+'shallow-info' section in the server's response as explained below.
+
+ shallow <oid>
+ A client must notify the server of all commits for which it only
+ has shallow copies (meaning that it doesn't have the parents of
+ a commit) by supplying a 'shallow <oid>' line for each such
+ object so that the server is aware of the limitations of the
+ client's history. This is so that the server is aware that the
+ client may not have all objects reachable from such commits.
+
+ deepen <depth>
+ Requests that the fetch/clone should be shallow having a commit
+ depth of <depth> relative to the remote side.
+
+ deepen-relative
+ Requests that the semantics of the "deepen" command be changed
+ to indicate that the depth requested is relative to the client's
+ current shallow boundary, instead of relative to the requested
+ commits.
+
+ deepen-since <timestamp>
+ Requests that the shallow clone/fetch should be cut at a
+ specific time, instead of depth. Internally it's equivalent to
+ doing "git rev-list --max-age=<timestamp>". Cannot be used with
+ "deepen".
+
+ deepen-not <rev>
+ Requests that the shallow clone/fetch should be cut at a
+ specific revision specified by '<rev>', instead of a depth.
+ Internally it's equivalent of doing "git rev-list --not <rev>".
+ Cannot be used with "deepen", but can be used with
+ "deepen-since".
+
+If the 'filter' feature is advertised, the following argument can be
+included in the client's request:
+
+ filter <filter-spec>
+ Request that various objects from the packfile be omitted
+ using one of several filtering techniques. These are intended
+ for use with partial clone and partial fetch operations. See
+ `rev-list` for possible "filter-spec" values.
+
+If the 'ref-in-want' feature is advertised, the following argument can
+be included in the client's request as well as the potential addition of
+the 'wanted-refs' section in the server's response as explained below.
+
+ want-ref <ref>
+ Indicates to the server that the client wants to retrieve a
+ particular ref, where <ref> is the full name of a ref on the
+ server.
+
+The response of `fetch` is broken into a number of sections separated by
+delimiter packets (0001), with each section beginning with its section
+header.
+
+ output = *section
+ section = (acknowledgments | shallow-info | wanted-refs | packfile)
+ (flush-pkt | delim-pkt)
+
+ acknowledgments = PKT-LINE("acknowledgments" LF)
+ (nak | *ack)
+ (ready)
+ ready = PKT-LINE("ready" LF)
+ nak = PKT-LINE("NAK" LF)
+ ack = PKT-LINE("ACK" SP obj-id LF)
+
+ shallow-info = PKT-LINE("shallow-info" LF)
+ *PKT-LINE((shallow | unshallow) LF)
+ shallow = "shallow" SP obj-id
+ unshallow = "unshallow" SP obj-id
+
+ wanted-refs = PKT-LINE("wanted-refs" LF)
+ *PKT-LINE(wanted-ref LF)
+ wanted-ref = obj-id SP refname
+
+ packfile = PKT-LINE("packfile" LF)
+ *PKT-LINE(%x01-03 *%x00-ff)
+
+ acknowledgments section
+ * If the client determines that it is finished with negotiations
+ by sending a "done" line, the acknowledgments sections MUST be
+ omitted from the server's response.
+
+ * Always begins with the section header "acknowledgments"
+
+ * The server will respond with "NAK" if none of the object ids sent
+ as have lines were common.
+
+ * The server will respond with "ACK obj-id" for all of the
+ object ids sent as have lines which are common.
+
+ * A response cannot have both "ACK" lines as well as a "NAK"
+ line.
+
+ * The server will respond with a "ready" line indicating that
+ the server has found an acceptable common base and is ready to
+ make and send a packfile (which will be found in the packfile
+ section of the same response)
+
+ * If the server has found a suitable cut point and has decided
+ to send a "ready" line, then the server can decide to (as an
+ optimization) omit any "ACK" lines it would have sent during
+ its response. This is because the server will have already
+ determined the objects it plans to send to the client and no
+ further negotiation is needed.
+
+ shallow-info section
+ * If the client has requested a shallow fetch/clone, a shallow
+ client requests a fetch or the server is shallow then the
+ server's response may include a shallow-info section. The
+ shallow-info section will be included if (due to one of the
+ above conditions) the server needs to inform the client of any
+ shallow boundaries or adjustments to the clients already
+ existing shallow boundaries.
+
+ * Always begins with the section header "shallow-info"
+
+ * If a positive depth is requested, the server will compute the
+ set of commits which are no deeper than the desired depth.
+
+ * The server sends a "shallow obj-id" line for each commit whose
+ parents will not be sent in the following packfile.
+
+ * The server sends an "unshallow obj-id" line for each commit
+ which the client has indicated is shallow, but is no longer
+ shallow as a result of the fetch (due to its parents being
+ sent in the following packfile).
+
+ * The server MUST NOT send any "unshallow" lines for anything
+ which the client has not indicated was shallow as a part of
+ its request.
+
+ * This section is only included if a packfile section is also
+ included in the response.
+
+ wanted-refs section
+ * This section is only included if the client has requested a
+ ref using a 'want-ref' line and if a packfile section is also
+ included in the response.
+
+ * Always begins with the section header "wanted-refs".
+
+ * The server will send a ref listing ("<oid> <refname>") for
+ each reference requested using 'want-ref' lines.
+
+ * The server MUST NOT send any refs which were not requested
+ using 'want-ref' lines.
+
+ packfile section
+ * This section is only included if the client has sent 'want'
+ lines in its request and either requested that no more
+ negotiation be done by sending 'done' or if the server has
+ decided it has found a sufficient cut point to produce a
+ packfile.
+
+ * Always begins with the section header "packfile"
+
+ * The transmission of the packfile begins immediately after the
+ section header
+
+ * The data transfer of the packfile is always multiplexed, using
+ the same semantics of the 'side-band-64k' capability from
+ protocol version 1. This means that each packet, during the
+ packfile data stream, is made up of a leading 4-byte pkt-line
+ length (typical of the pkt-line format), followed by a 1-byte
+ stream code, followed by the actual data.
+
+ The stream code can be one of:
+ 1 - pack data
+ 2 - progress messages
+ 3 - fatal error message just before stream aborts
+
+ server-option
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+If advertised, indicates that any number of server specific options can be
+included in a request. This is done by sending each option as a
+"server-option=<option>" capability line in the capability-list section of
+a request.
+
+The provided options must not contain a NUL or LF character.
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/shallow.txt b/Documentation/technical/shallow.txt
index 5183b15422..01dedfe9ff 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/shallow.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/shallow.txt
@@ -8,20 +8,22 @@ repo, and therefore grafts are introduced pretending that
these commits have no parents.
*********************************************************
-The basic idea is to write the SHA-1s of shallow commits into
-$GIT_DIR/shallow, and handle its contents like the contents
-of $GIT_DIR/info/grafts (with the difference that shallow
-cannot contain parent information).
-
-This information is stored in a new file instead of grafts, or
-even the config, since the user should not touch that file
-at all (even throughout development of the shallow clone, it
-was never manually edited!).
+$GIT_DIR/shallow lists commit object names and tells Git to
+pretend as if they are root commits (e.g. "git log" traversal
+stops after showing them; "git fsck" does not complain saying
+the commits listed on their "parent" lines do not exist).
Each line contains exactly one SHA-1. When read, a commit_graft
will be constructed, which has nr_parent < 0 to make it easier
to discern from user provided grafts.
+Note that the shallow feature could not be changed easily to
+use replace refs: a commit containing a `mergetag` is not allowed
+to be replaced, not even by a root commit. Such a commit can be
+made shallow, though. Also, having a `shallow` file explicitly
+listing all the commits made shallow makes it a *lot* easier to
+do shallow-specific things such as to deepen the history.
+
Since fsck-objects relies on the library to read the objects,
it honours shallow commits automatically.