Subject: Re: Branch Name Case Sensitivity

From: Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:13:39 +0100

On 02/28/2014 12:38 AM, Lee Hopkins wrote:
> [...] Based Michael Haggerty's response, it seems that always
> using loose refs would be a better workaround.

No, I answered the question "what would be the disadvantages of using
only packed refs?".  Now I will answer the question "what would be the
disadvantages of using only loose refs?":

1. Efficiency.  Any time all of the references have to be read, loose
refs are far slower than packed refs.

2. Disk space and inode usage: loose refs consume one inode and one disk
sector (typically 4k) each, whereas packed refs consume only one inode
in total, and many packed refs can fit into each disk sector.

After all, there is a reason that we have both packed refs and loose
refs.  The basic idea is to use packed refs for the bulk of references,
especially "cold" references like tags that only change infrequently,
but to store "hot" references as loose refs so that they can be modified
cheaply.

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
[email-masked]
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/