thoughts on Git::Raw / libgit2?

thoughts on Git::Raw / libgit2?

[Eric Wong]

Hey all,

First off, I have no intention of making Git::Raw (Perl libgit2
wrapper) or libgit2 a hard dependency.  It'll be an option if
available, like most of our dependencies.

Git::Raw is not packaged with CentOS 7.x; but cpan/cpanm is an
option.  It is in Debian 10.x as libgit-raw-perl, so I can
report bugs via Debian's BTS[*].

I only intend to use Git::Raw for blob retrievals as a separate
AF_UNIX SOCK_STREAM daemon similar to how we use
`git cat-file --batch/--batch-check'.

The socket/pipe interface works well for unpredictable seek
times on HDDs.  Using Git::Raw from an AF_UNIX SOCK_STREAM
daemon would allow us to save pipe buffers, and PIDs when
there's tens/hundreds of thousands of git repos involved.


[*] I have no intention of ever using a proprietary service for
    free software development.  Even if GitHub were free software,
    their terms-of-service is unacceptable to me.

Re: thoughts on Git::Raw / libgit2?

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 09:40:51PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> Git::Raw is not packaged with CentOS 7.x; but cpan/cpanm is an
> option.  It is in Debian 10.x as libgit-raw-perl, so I can
> report bugs via Debian's BTS[*].

FYI, even though lore.kernel.org runs on CentOS 7.x, most perl modules 
come from cpan -- so if your reluctance to use it is based on lore 
usage, that's not something we'd be particularly concerned about.

Best,
-K

Re: thoughts on Git::Raw / libgit2?

[Eric Wong]

Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 09:40:51PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> > Git::Raw is not packaged with CentOS 7.x; but cpan/cpanm is an
> > option.  It is in Debian 10.x as libgit-raw-perl, so I can
> > report bugs via Debian's BTS[*].
> 
> FYI, even though lore.kernel.org runs on CentOS 7.x, most perl modules 
> come from cpan -- so if your reluctance to use it is based on lore 
> usage, that's not something we'd be particularly concerned about.

Thanks for the response.  lore is definitely a big factor of
consideration, but I would also like to make it easier for
others to mirror lore w/o needing CPAN.

Fwiw, CentOS 7.x does have libgit2-devel and Inline::C packaged;
so that's an option, too.

Given the announcement of Perl 7 today makes me a little
uneasy(*), I might be a bit more inclined to introduce more
functionality via Inline::C.


(*) Perl 7 will probably be less painful than the Python 3 or
    Ruby 1.9 transitions, but those are low bars.  Having "only"
    a ~decade-long support window for old Perl 5 stuff doesn't
    seem sufficient.  I guess distros and users (myself included)
    will need to do our part to keep things from breaking and
    possibly extend maintenance indefinitely.

Re: thoughts on Git::Raw / libgit2?

[Eric Wong]

I noped out of Git::Raw since their manpage explicitly stated
it's an unstable API.  So I'm using Inline::C for libgit2
support (we've been using Inline::C for years, now):

  https://public-inbox.org/meta/20200919093714.21776-1-e@80x24.org/