Subject: Re: [PATCH 06/23] midx: struct midxed_git and 'read' subcommand

From: Derrick Stolee <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2018 09:33:50 -0400

On 6/7/2018 2:31 PM, Duy Nguyen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 4:03 PM, Derrick Stolee <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> diff --git a/Documentation/git-midx.txt b/Documentation/git-midx.txt
>> index dcaeb1a91b..919283fdd8 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/git-midx.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/git-midx.txt
>> @@ -23,6 +23,11 @@ OPTIONS
>>          <dir>/packs/multi-pack-index for the current MIDX file, and
>>          <dir>/packs for the pack-files to index.
>>
>> +read::
>> +       When given as the verb, read the current MIDX file and output
>> +       basic information about its contents. Used for debugging
>> +       purposes only.
> On second thought. If you just need a temporary debugging interface,
> adding a program in t/helper may be a better option. In the end we
> might still need 'read' to dump a file out, but we should have some
> stable output format (and json might be a good choice).

My intention with this 'read' pattern in the MIDX (and commit-graph) is 
two-fold:

1. We can test that we are writing the correct data in our test suite. A 
test-tool builtin would suffice for this purpose.

2. We can help trouble-shoot users who may be having trouble with their 
MIDX files. Having the subcommand in a plumbing command allows us to do 
this in the shipped versions of Git.

Maybe this second purpose isn't enough to justify the feature in Git and 
we should move this to the test-tool, especially with the 'verify' mode 
coming in a second series. Note that a 'verify' mode doesn't satisfy 
item (1).

Thanks,
-Stolee