index-v4: document the entry format

Document the format so that others can learn from and build on top of
the series.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Junio C Hamano 2012-04-27 16:02:45 -07:00
parent 9170c7ab28
commit afd7bd2220

View File

@ -113,9 +113,22 @@ GIT index format
are encoded in 7-bit ASCII and the encoding cannot contain a NUL
byte (iow, this is a UNIX pathname).
(Version 4) In version 4, the entry path name is prefix-compressed
relative to the path name for the previous entry (the very first
entry is encoded as if the path name for the previous entry is an
empty string). At the beginning of an entry, an integer N in the
variable width encoding (the same encoding as the offset is encoded
for OFS_DELTA pack entries; see pack-format.txt) is stored, followed
by a NUL-terminated string S. Removing N bytes from the end of the
path name for the previous entry, and replacing it with the string S
yields the path name for this entry.
1-8 nul bytes as necessary to pad the entry to a multiple of eight bytes
while keeping the name NUL-terminated.
(Version 4) In version 4, the padding after the pathname does not
exist.
== Extensions
=== Cached tree