Re: hard dependency on Git? (was bug#65866: [PATCH 0/8] Add built-in builder for Git checkouts)

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2023-09-11, Simon Tournier wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Sep 2023 at 16:23, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Note that the patch series adds a hard dependency on Git.
>> This is because the existing ‘git-fetch’ code depends on Git,
>> which is itself motivated by the fact that Git supports
>> shallow clones and libgit2/Guile-Git doesn’t.
...
> Personally, I do not have a strong opinion about the Big Plan™.  I note
> that the introduction of Git as a hard dependency is a slippery slope
> considering the current state of libgit2.  Here, it starts with “git
> clone”, then “git gc” (unsupported by libgit2) is also in the pipes
> (#65720 [1]).

What about making git an optional dependency, and only calling out to
"git gc" if git is available in PATH? Maybe possible also with shallow
clones?

Then you have the best/worst of both worlds! Speaking to the worst, you
have at least two disparate codepaths for a seemingly similar operation,
and that might be annoying...

live well,
  vagrant

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