gitlab VS Git

(Side note: Issues are usually hash-prefixed like #1234 both on GitLab and GitHub. However, commit messages must not begin with a hash, they would be considered a comment and ignored. Therefore, GitHub has introduced the alternative prefix GH- and I've contributed a similar prefix GL- to GitLab a while ago.)

and its "oh, you want multi-arch, do you?" friend. While prosecuting this <https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/339567> I learned that https://hub.docker.com/layers/multiarch/qemu-user-static/7.2... actually mutates the binfmt_misc in buildx's context in order to exec the static copy of qemu in it https://github.com/multiarch/qemu-user-static/blob/v7.2.0-1/...

and, that the buildx plugin itself has some qemu magick in it, which got addressed in a minor version bump but I couldn't track down the relevant GitHub issue this second (I've flushed it from my mind, only recalling that there were a lot of actors in that tire fire)

This is actually a follow-up refactor, the fix is here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/commit/abe79e4ec43798...

This made me curious. Having never read the gitlab code before, and on mobile, took all of about 30 seconds to find https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/blob/master/config/ro...

Those are some pretty clean routes!

Boy, I can't find this either (but also, the kernel mailing list is _really_ difficult to search). I really remember Linus saying something like "it's not a real SCM, but maybe someone could build one on top of it someday" or something like that, but I cannot figure out how to find that.

You _can_ see, though, that in his first README, he refers to what he's building as not a "real SCM":

https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23...

Here is the direct link, as HN somehow removes the query string: https://github.com/git/git/commits?author=peff&since=2023-10...

I understand all that.

I'm saying, if you write a survey and one of the possible answers is "diff", but you don't clearly define what you mean by "diff", then don't be surprised if respondents use any reasonable definition that makes sense to them. Ask an ambiguous question, get a mishmash of answers.

The thing that Git uses for packfiles is called a "delta" by Git, but it's also reasonable to call it a "diff". After all, Git's delta algorithm is "greatly inspired by parts of LibXDiff from Davide Libenzi"[1]. Not LibXDelta but LibXDiff.

Yes, how Git stores blobs (using deltas) is orthogonal to how Git uses blobs. But while that orthogonality is useful for reasoning about Git, it's not wrong to think of a commit as the totality of what Git does, including that optimization. (Some people, when learning Git, stumble over the way it's described as storing full copies, think it's wasteful. For them to wrap their heads around Git, they have to understand that the optimization exists. Which makes sense because Git probably wouldn't be practical if it lacked that optimization.)

The reason I'm bringing all this up is, if you're trying to explain Git, which is what the original article is about, then it's very important to keep in mind that someone who is learning Git needs to know what you mean when you say "diff". Most people who already know Git would tend to gravitate toward the definition of "diff" that you're assuming (the thing that Git computes on the fly and never stores), but people who already know Git aren't the target audience when you're teaching Git.

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[1] https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/diff-delta.c

Didn't Git have a new default merge strategy, `ort` https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/RelNote... ?

Yes, but you are referring to standalone scripts, not functions defined within a Bash script.

Compare for example the following helper code used for git command completion inside Bash and inside PowerShell.

Bash: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/completion/gi...