Re: git copies of cvs modules available

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 01:34:54PM -0500, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
> > Perhaps this would be the point to note that Mercurial's preferred
> > remote update service requires only http and a cgi script...
> >
> that won't forbid the cgi to take huge resources at all... the "git
> service" is pretty much nothing but a pipe to git-pack-objects (not
> sure it's that one exactly, but it's the idea).

It is very easy to provide CTM-like operation for Mercurial in a way
that requires *no* Mercurial or any other dynamic component on the
server *and* that is almost as efficient in terms of network bandwidth
as the native IO protocol.

All you have to do is provide a cron job that memorizes the last
revision and bundles all newer revision into a file like
"netbsd-src-changes-20100112-0600.bundle". The cron job also appends
that revision hash and that filename to "netbsd-src-index.txt" or so.
The client can now fetch the second file via normal HTTP/FTP/whatever,
check what files have missing revisions and either fetch the files
manually to "hg unbundle" or just use "hg pull" with the HTTP URL.
Bundles are compressed themselve and essentially the same as the wire
protocol used with the native network protocol, the only additional
overhead is the index file (small!) and the small script glue around
that. Add regular full snapshots to make bootstrapping not too much of a
chase the tip and it is a very mirror friendly system.

Joerg