Re: lei import on epochs [was: make menuconfig interface for lei / grok-pull]

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 09:09:02PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> > Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> wrote:
> > > # The next two don't work
> > > lei import import https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/git/0.git
> > 
> > Btw, extra "import" aside; I never intended to support the above
> > case.  However, your post got me thinking we could and probably
> > should... :>
> > 
> > (epochs are git storage with a loose limit of ~1G packed data,
> >  "slices" are public-inbox-imapd folders capped at 50K to
> >  accomodate limitations of existing clients/filesystems)
> 
> So... by default all epochs are pulled? If so, yeah geesh.
> I don't want to pull all linux-kernel epochs. Only if doing
> R&D on that list would I need it.

Right now, "lei import" doesn't read nor understand git repos at all.

If you meant add-external, yes, all epochs are pulled when using
"lei add-external --mirror" (and public-inbox-clone).  Yes,
there should be a way to do partial mirrors, just haven't
gotten around to it...

"lei import" currently reads IMAP, NNTP, Maildir, mbox*, etc.
It also understands various https?://*/(raw,t.mbox.gz) URLs used by
PublicInbox::WWW, since they're (gzipped) mboxrd.
But none of that is reading from git repos directly...

> Maybe a --query-epochs and then a --use-epoch 0  or whatever
> as well?

Since epochs expose the gittyness of lei, perhaps a limited form
of commitish-like ranges used by git would work:

  lei add-external --mirror $URL --epoch=0..9
  lei add-external --mirror $URL --epoch=5..
  lei add-external --mirror $URL --epoch=~2..  # like HEAD~2..

That only works for contiguous ranges, though; but I'm also
unsure if discontiguous ranges make sense to anyone.

There's other syntaxes (e.g. (sed|Perl)-like), of course,
but I think git-like here would be most natural.

Thoughts?