Subject: Re: Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution

From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2023 23:02:32 -0500

On Thu, Feb 02, 2023 at 05:19:30PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> In my opinion as the original developer of pristine-tar, it's too
> complicated to be usefully used by git. The problem it solves is of a
> larger scope than the problem git has here. (I hope.)

Well, the problem which I believe folks on this thread are trying to
deal with is a way to reconstruct a bit-for-bit compressed tarball of
a particular release in a way that minimizes the cost of storage in
the git tree.  One way of doing that would be to guarantee that git
archive would return something which is always bit-for-bit identical.
Another way is to use something like pristine tar.

I'll grant that pristine tar does solve a bit more of the problem than
what has been stated, since it allows the creator of the tarball to
remove some files, or add some auto-generated files (e.g., after
running autoreconf), and so in that way, pristine tar does solve a
somewhat larger problem than what was expressed in this thread.

That being said, however, pristine-tar is **extremely** useful, and
I'm very happy, and very thankful, that you wrote it.  It has been
super, super useful.

Cheers,

						- Ted