Subject: gitpacker progress report and a question

From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:28:18 -0500

Some days ago I reported that I was attempting to write a tool that could
(a) take a git repo and unpack it into a tarball sequence plus a metadata log,
(b) reverse that operation, packing a tarball and log sequence into a repo.

Thanks in part to advice by Andreas Schwab and in part to looking at the
text of the p4 import script, this effort has succeeded.  A proof of
concept is enclosed.  It isn't documented yet, and has not been tested
on a repository with branches or merges in the history, but I am confident
that the distance from here to a finished and tested tool is short. 

The immediate intended use is for importing older projects that are
available only as sequences of release tarballs, but there are other
sorts of repository surgery that would become easier using it.

I'm still looking for a better name for it and would welcome suggestions.

Before I do much further work, I need to determine how this will be shipped.
I see two possibilities: either I ship it as a small standalone project,
or it becomes a git subcommand shipped with the git suite. How I document 
it and set up its tests would differ between these two cases.

Is there a process for submitting new subcommands?  What are the 
test-suite and documentation requirements?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>