doc: describe Git bundle format

The bundle format was not documented. Describe the format with ABNF and
explain the meaning of each part.

Signed-off-by: Masaya Suzuki <masayasuzuki@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Masaya Suzuki 2020-02-07 12:42:25 -08:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent b6d4d82bd5
commit 7378ec90e1

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= Git bundle v2 format
The Git bundle format is a format that represents both refs and Git objects.
== Format
We will use ABNF notation to define the Git bundle format. See
protocol-common.txt for the details.
----
bundle = signature *prerequisite *reference LF pack
signature = "# v2 git bundle" LF
prerequisite = "-" obj-id SP comment LF
comment = *CHAR
reference = obj-id SP refname LF
pack = ... ; packfile
----
== Semantics
A Git bundle consists of three parts.
* "Prerequisites" lists the objects that are NOT included in the bundle and the
reader of the bundle MUST already have, in order to use the data in the
bundle. The objects stored in the bundle may refer to prerequisite objects and
anything reachable from them (e.g. a tree object in the bundle can reference
a blob that is reachable from a prerequisite) and/or expressed as a delta
against prerequisite objects.
* "References" record the tips of the history graph, iow, what the reader of the
bundle CAN "git fetch" from it.
* "Pack" is the pack data stream "git fetch" would send, if you fetch from a
repository that has the references recorded in the "References" above into a
repository that has references pointing at the objects listed in
"Prerequisites" above.
In the bundle format, there can be a comment following a prerequisite obj-id.
This is a comment and it has no specific meaning. The writer of the bundle MAY
put any string here. The reader of the bundle MUST ignore the comment.
=== Note on the shallow clone and a Git bundle
Note that the prerequisites does not represent a shallow-clone boundary. The
semantics of the prerequisites and the shallow-clone boundaries are different,
and the Git bundle v2 format cannot represent a shallow clone repository.