Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] Introduce a "promisor-remote" capability

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 15:48:11 -0700

Christian Couder <[email-masked]> writes:

> By the way there was an unconference breakout session on day 2 of the
> Git Merge called "Git LFS Can we do better?" where this was discussed
> with a number of people. Scott Chacon took some notes:
>
> https://github.com/git/git-merge/blob/main/breakouts/git-lfs.md

Thanks for a link.

> It was in parallel with the Contributor Summit, so few contributors
> participated in this session (maybe only Michael Haggerty, John Cai
> and me). But the impression of GitLab people there, including me, was
> that folks in general would be happy to have an alternative to Git LFS
> based on this.

I am not sure what "based on this" is really about, though.

This series adds a feature to redirect requests to one server to
another, but does it really have much to solve the problem LFS wants
to solve?  I would imagine that you would want to be able to manage
larger objects separately to avoid affecting the performance and
convenience when handling smaller objects, and to serve these larger
objects from a dedicated server.  You certainly can filter the
larger blobs away with blob size filter, but when you really need
these larger blobs, it is unclear how the new capability helps, as
you cannot really tell what the criteria the serving side that gave
you the "promisor-remote" capability wants you to use to sift your
requests between the original server and the new promisor.  Wouldn't
your requests _all_ be redirected to a single place, the promisor
remote you learned via the capability?

Coming up with a better alternative to LFS is certainly good, and it
is worthwhile addtion to the system.  I just do not see how the
topic of this series helps further that goal.

Thanks.