Subject: Re: fast-import fails in read-only tree

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 08:56:48 -0500

> You can use custom cat-file formatting to output your "name" strings as
> part of the same field. IOW, something like:
[...]
> If you're really going to do a lot of interactive back-and-forth access
> of objects, though, I think you want to set up pipes to cat-file.

OMG, I didn't realize that cat-file doesn't buffer its output so it can
be read&write to/from the same process.  And the "%(rest)" thingy takes
care of the rest of my needs, indeed.

Thanks!

> It's a little tedious to allocate fifos, but something like:

That's not a problem.

> One feature I do think would be useful (and almost implemented when I
> added --batch-check=<format>) is a formatter for the object content,
> with a pretty modifier. I.e., it would be nice to do:
>
>   echo $some_tree |
>   git cat-file --batch-check="%(objectsize:pretty) %(contents:pretty)"
>
> to work as the rough equivalent of "git cat-file -p" (but here you could
> feed multiple trees and get multiple answers).

Yes, that would be a good improvement,

        Stefan