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Joey Hess 2021-04-16 14:41:12 -04:00
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doc/todo/hiding_a_repository.mdwn
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@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ that remote would not work. (Without setting annex-speculate-present.) Also
some remotes depend on state being stored, like chunking data, encryption,
etc. So setting up networks of repos that know about one-another but are
hidden from the wider world would need some kind of public/private
git-annex branch separation. Which would be a very large complication.)
git-annex branch separation (see alternative section below).)
## location tracking effects
@ -113,3 +113,43 @@ git-annex branch.
That seems to be all. --[[Joey]]
---
## alternative: public/private git-annex branch separation
This would need a separate index file in addition to .git/annex/index,
call it index-private. Any logging of information that includes a hidden
uuid would modify index-private instead. When index-private exists,
git-annex branch queries have to read from both index and index-private,
and can just concacentate the two. (But writes are more complicated, see below.)
index-private could be committed to a git-annex-private branch, but this is
not necessary for the single repo case. But doing that could allow for a
group of repos that are all hidden but share information via that branch.
Performance overhead seems like it would mostly be in determining if
index-private exists and needs to be read from. And that should be
cacheable for the life of git-annex.
Or, it could only read from index-private when the git config has the
feature enabled. Then turning off the feature would need the user to do
something to merge index-private into index, in order to keep using the
repo with the info stored there. This approach also means that the user can
temporarily disable the feature and see how the git-annex info will appear
to others, eg see that whereis and info do not list their hidden repository.
In a lot of ways this seems simpler than the approach of not writing to the
branch. Main complication is log writes. All the log modules need to
indicate when writes are adding information that needs to be kept private.
Often a log file will be read, and then written with a new line added
and perhaps an old line removed. Eg:
addLog file line = Annex.Branch.change file $ \b ->
buildLog $ compactLog (line : parseLog b)
This seems like it would need Annex.Branch.change to be passed a parameter
indicating if it's changing the public or private log. Luckily, I think
all reads followed by writes do go via Annex.Branch.change, so Annex.Branch.get
can just concacenate the two without worrying about it leaking back out in a
later write.