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From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox•com>
To: "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste•net>
Cc: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail•com>,
	"Konstantin Ryabitsev" <konstantin@linuxfoundation•org>,
	"Eli Schwartz" <eschwartz93@gmail•com>,
	"Git List" <git@vger•kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:37:19 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <xmqqh6w5x8i8.fsf@gitster.g> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Y9ry5Wxck4s/X2B+@tapette.crustytoothpaste.net> (brian m. carlson's message of "Wed, 1 Feb 2023 23:16:53 +0000")

"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste•net> writes:

> I don't think a blurb is necessary, but you're basically underscoring
> the problem, which is that nobody is willing to promise that compression
> is consistent, but yet people want to rely on that fact.  I'm willing to
> write and implement a consistent tar spec and to guarantee compatibility
> with that, but the tension here is that people also want gzip to never
> change its byte format ever, which frankly seems unrealistic without
> explicit guarantees.  Maybe the authors will agree to promise that, but
> it seems unlikely.

Just to step back a bit, where does the distinction between
guaranteeing the tar format stability and gzip compressed bitstream
stability come from?  At both levels, the same thing can be
expressed in multiple different ways, I think, but spelling out how
exactly the compressor compresses is more involved than spelling out
how entries in a tar archive is ordered and each entry is expressed,
or something?

> That would probably break things, because gzip is GPLv3, and we'd need
> to ship a much older GPLv2 gzip, which would probably differ from the
> current behaviour, and might also have some security problems.

Yup, security issues may make bit-for-bit-stability unrealistic.
IIRC, the last time we had discussion on this topic, we settled
on stability across the same version of Git (i.e. deterministic
result)?

  reply	other threads:[~2023-02-01 23:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 57+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-01-31  0:06 Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution Eli Schwartz
2023-01-31  7:49 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-01-31  9:11   ` Eli Schwartz
2023-02-02  9:32   ` [PATCH 0/9] git archive: use gzip again by default, document output stabilty Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 1/9] archive & tar config docs: de-duplicate configuration section Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 2/9] git config docs: document "tar.<format>.{command,remote}" Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 3/9] archiver API: make the "flags" in "struct archiver" an enum Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 4/9] archive: omit the shell for built-in "command" filters Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 5/9] archive-tar.c: move internal gzip implementation to a function Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 6/9] archive: use "gzip -cn" for stability, not "git archive gzip" Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 7/9] test-lib.sh: add a lazy GZIP prerequisite Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 8/9] archive tests: test for "gzip -cn" and "git archive gzip" stability Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  9:32     ` [PATCH 9/9] git archive docs: document output non-stability Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02 10:25       ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-02 10:30         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02 16:34         ` Junio C Hamano
2023-02-04 17:46           ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-02 16:17     ` [PATCH 0/9] git archive: use gzip again by default, document output stabilty Phillip Wood
2023-02-02 16:40       ` Junio C Hamano
2023-02-02 19:23       ` Raymond E. Pasco
2023-02-03  8:06         ` [PATCH] archive: document output stability concerns Raymond E. Pasco
2023-02-03 13:49       ` [PATCH 0/9] git archive: use gzip again by default, document output stabilty Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-06 14:46         ` Phillip Wood
2023-02-03 15:47       ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-02-02 16:25     ` Junio C Hamano
2023-02-04 18:08       ` René Scharfe
2023-02-05 21:30         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-12 17:41           ` René Scharfe
2023-01-31  9:54 ` Stability of git-archive, breaking (?) the Github universe, and a possible solution brian m. carlson
2023-01-31 11:31   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-01-31 15:05   ` Konstantin Ryabitsev
2023-01-31 22:32     ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-01  9:40       ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-01 11:34         ` demerphq
2023-02-01 12:21           ` Michal Suchánek
2023-02-01 12:48             ` demerphq
2023-02-01 13:43               ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-01 15:21                 ` demerphq
2023-02-01 18:56                   ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-02-02 21:19                     ` Joey Hess
2023-02-03  4:02                       ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-02-03 13:32                         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-01 12:17         ` Raymond E. Pasco
2023-02-01 23:16         ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-01 23:37           ` Junio C Hamano [this message]
2023-02-02 23:01             ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-02 23:47               ` rsbecker
2023-02-03 13:18                 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-02  0:42           ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-01-31 15:56   ` Eli Schwartz
2023-01-31 16:20     ` Konstantin Ryabitsev
2023-01-31 16:34       ` Eli Schwartz
2023-01-31 20:34         ` Konstantin Ryabitsev
2023-01-31 20:45         ` Michal Suchánek
2023-02-01  1:33     ` brian m. carlson
2023-02-01 12:42   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2023-02-01 23:18     ` brian m. carlson

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