gix-ref: ref-table backend (research)

[Byron]

It's not in mainline yet, but definitely kind of on the way and available.

• an integration to mainline - superseded
• a standalone implementation
• the documentation in reftable.txt in the git repository

I thought I saw it show up once in the mainline git repository, but it's definitely not there anymore.

[KarthikNayak]

FYI this is now merged into v2.45.0 https://gitlab.com/git-vcs/git/-/blob/v2.45.1/Documentation/RelNotes/2.45.0.txt?ref_type=tags#L8

[kamulos]

This would be quite nice if supported. Just out of curiosity I used --ref-format=reftable when cloning some repos, but my starship prompt cannot show most information about the repo (for example which branch I am on).

[Byron]

Thanks for the heads-up! It will definitely take a while until this becomes priority, as it will only really be needed when gitoxide gets to the server side.

[KarthikNayak]

Thanks for the heads-up! It will definitely take a while until this becomes priority, as it will only really be needed when gitoxide gets to the server side.

Reftables can be used on the client side too. Like @kamulos mentioned, clients like starship would already break.

[Byron]

I am quite aware - however, those most interested would be servers, or users with huge monorepos. The latter are probably missing more features than just ref-table at the moment, so it will take a while. Ordinary use-cases don't have benefits switching to ref-table, as it makes the ref-database more obscure.

[KarthikNayak]

Yup, that I agree with. There is also talks about making it default a lot later, something to keep an eye out for https://lore.kernel.org/git/84c01f1b0a2d24d7de912606f548623601c0d715.1716555034.git.ps@pks.im/

[Byron]

Thanks! Please keep me posted about this. I definitely hope they won't make it default anytime soon, that would force my hand 😅.
Thinking about it - the ton of Git libraries out there would all have to struggle to get that implemented, so my feeling is they will just keep what's working well by now.