This crate provides the [Repository] abstraction which serves as a hub into all the functionality of git.

It's powerful and won't sacrifice performance while still increasing convenience compared to using the sub-crates individually. Sometimes it may hide complexity under the assumption that the performance difference doesn't matter for all but the fewest tools out there, which would be using the underlying crates directly or file an issue.

The prelude and extensions

With use git_repository::prelude::* you should be ready to go as it pulls in various extension traits to make functionality available on objects that may use it.

The method signatures are still complex and may require various arguments for configuration and cache control.

Easy-Mode

Most extensions to existing objects provide an obj_with_extension.easy(&repo).an_easier_version_of_a_method() or easy(&repo) method to hide all complex arguments and sacrifice some performance for a lot of convenience.

When starting out, use easy(…) and migrate to the more detailed method signatures to squeeze out more performance.

Shortcomings & Limitations

• Only one easy::Object or derivatives can be held in memory at a time, per Easy*.
• Changes made to the configuration, packs, and alternates aren't picked up automatically if they aren't made through the underlying Repository instance. Run one of the [refresh*()][prelude::RepositoryAccessExt] to trigger an update. Also note that this is only a consideration for long-running processes.

Design Sketch

Goal is to make the lower-level plumbing available without having to deal with any caches or buffers, and avoid any allocation beyond sizing the buffer to fit the biggest object seen so far.

• no implicit object lookups, thus Oid needs to get an Object first to start out with data via object()
• Objects with Ref suffix can only exist one at a time unless they are transformed into an owned version of it OR multiple Easy handles are present, each providing another 'slot' for an object as long as its retrieved through the respective Easy object.
• ObjectRef blocks the current buffer, hence many of its operations that use the buffer are consuming
• All methods that access a any field from Easy's mutable State are fallible, and return easy::Result<_> at least, to avoid panics if the field can't be referenced due to borrow rules of RefCell.
• Anything attached to Access can be detached to lift the object limit or make them Send-able. They can be attached to another Access if needed.
• git-repository functions related to Access extensions will always return attached versions of return values, like Oid instead of git_hash::ObjectId, ObjectRef instead of git_odb::data::Object, or Reference instead of git_ref::Reference.
• Obtaining mutable is currently a weak spot as these only work with Arc right now and can't work with Rc<RefCell> due to missing GATs, presumably. All Easy*!Exclusive types are unable to provide a mutable reference to the underlying repository. However, other ways to adjust the Repository of long-running applications are possible. For instance, there could be a flag that indicates a new Repository should be created (for instance, after it was changed) which causes the next server connection to create a new one. This instance is the one to use when spawning new EasyArc instances.

Terminology

WorkingTree and WorkTree

When reading the documentation of the canonical git-worktree program one gets the impression work tree and working tree are used interchangeably. We use the term work tree only and try to do so consistently as its shorter and assumed to be the same.

Cargo-features

With the optional "unstable" cargo feature

To make using sub-crates easier these are re-exported into the root of this crate. Note that these may change their major version even if this crate doesn't, hence breaking downstream.

git_repository::

• [hash]
• [url]
• [actor]
• [bstr][bstr]
• [objs]
• [odb]
• [pack][odb::pack]
• [refs]
• [interrupt]
• [tempfile]
• [lock]
• [traverse]
• [diff]
• [parallel]
• [Progress]
• [progress]
• [interrupt]
• [protocol]
• [transport][protocol::transport]