Subject: Re: [PATCH] provide advance warning of some future pack default changes

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:41:19 -0800

Nicolas Pitre <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Mon, 17 Dec 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>> Instead we unconditionally said "if you are downloading with the new
>> client, we assume you would never be using older client to access that
>> repository locally, if you did so, you are screwed."
>> 
>> IOW, I think e4fe4b8ef7cdde842a9e5e2594d0fba1367d9dd3 (let the GIT
>> native protocol use offsets to delta base when possible) could have been
>> a bit more careful in this respect.
>
> Probably.  But this can hardly be called a "corruption" since nothing 
> was actually lost, rather an incompatibility problem.

It is not a corruption, but the distinction doesn't matter much to the
end user who wants to get the job done with the data right now.  The
data that was made inaccessible is inaccessible.  The only difference is
that it is recoverable once the user upgrades, but that may be painful,
even though it may be rewarding afterwards and worth doing so, and the
user may not be able to afford doing so right at that moment.