GNU bug report logs - #65720
Guile-Git-managed checkouts grow way too much

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From: Csepp <raingloom <at> riseup.net>
To: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
Cc: dev <at> jpoiret.xyz, 65720 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#65720: Guile-Git-managed checkouts grow way too much
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:00:07 +0200

Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org> writes:

> Hello!
>
> Josselin Poiret <dev <at> jpoiret.xyz> skribis:
>
>> Right, although I wouldn't necessarily say that the former doesn't have
>> a proper API, but rather that it has a Unix-oriented API.  That leads to
>> performance issues on e.g. Windows but on Linux I'm not sure there's
>> much of a difference.
>
> [...]
>
>> We could consider replacing the guile-git dependency with another
>> library built directly on top of git-minimal, and have this be a
>> dependency of Guix.  Not ideal though, and not really scalable either:
>> we can't just add every VCS as direct dependencies.
>
> I cannot imagine a viable implementation of things like ‘commit-closure’
> and ‘commit-relation’ from (guix git) done by shelling out to ‘git’.
> I’m quite confident this would be slow and brittle.
>
> It looks like there’s no option other than carrying the two
> implementations.
>
> ~~~
>
> Years ago, Andy Wingo sketched a plan for GNU hackers to implement Git
> in pure Scheme.  That was on April 1st though, so people mistakenly
> assumed it was a joke and the project was never carried out.
>
> I digress, but I wonder: is there not even a viable Haskell or OCaml
> implementation of Git?
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

For sake of completeness:
There is an alternative implentation in C for Plan 9 that I've used and
is now mature enough that the 9front project switched to it from
Mercurial.
It might be possible to compile it with the plan9port compiler wrapper.

There is also a Git implementation in OCaml that some MirageOS
unikernels use to serve static content from a git repository.
Also the Irmin "database" is based on git and is written in OCaml.

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