Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Retrieving per-file data from csets/revs

[David Allouche]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 12:02:30PM +0300, Samium Gromoff wrote:
> At Mon, 01 Dec 2003 16:52:54 +0300,
> Samium Gromoff wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > For the reasons i pursue, it would be rather cool to have
> > certain retrieval functions in tla, namely:
> > 
> >     - tla cset-file-diff $FILENAME
> >     - tla rev-file-diff $FILENAME
> > 
> > So that i can easily see what have been changed in a particular file
> > for a given revision/cset.
> 
> Let me re-iterate/re-express the point:
> 
> You have a 10M changeset in a remote archive accessible via
> an 33.6kbaud modem.
> 
> And you want to see what was changed in one specific file, without
> downloading the whole monster-delta.
> 
> How do you do that?

First, a 10M changeset is bad. Only import revisions should be this big.

Then, you cannot do that simply without breaking the golden rule "arch
needs no specific server-side software, just a file server with
scp/ftp/http".

Actually, there may be a way to gain something by piping the download
into the tarball extraction. But it would probably be too complicated
for its usefulness, considering that (1) such big changesets are
aberrations and (2) if you ever work in such a context, the reasonable
thing to do is to start by making a local mirror.

Is it actually something you have encountered in real-world use?

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa