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authorVincent Ambo <Vincent Ambo>2020-01-11T23·36+0000
committerVincent Ambo <Vincent Ambo>2020-01-11T23·36+0000
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+Git Protocol Capabilities
+=========================
+
+NOTE: this document describes capabilities for versions 0 and 1 of the pack
+protocol. For version 2, please refer to the link:protocol-v2.html[protocol-v2]
+doc.
+
+Servers SHOULD support all capabilities defined in this document.
+
+On the very first line of the initial server response of either
+receive-pack and upload-pack the first reference is followed by
+a NUL byte and then a list of space delimited server capabilities.
+These allow the server to declare what it can and cannot support
+to the client.
+
+Client will then send a space separated list of capabilities it wants
+to be in effect. The client MUST NOT ask for capabilities the server
+did not say it supports.
+
+Server MUST diagnose and abort if capabilities it does not understand
+was sent.  Server MUST NOT ignore capabilities that client requested
+and server advertised.  As a consequence of these rules, server MUST
+NOT advertise capabilities it does not understand.
+
+The 'atomic', 'report-status', 'delete-refs', 'quiet', and 'push-cert'
+capabilities are sent and recognized by the receive-pack (push to server)
+process.
+
+The 'ofs-delta' and 'side-band-64k' capabilities are sent and recognized
+by both upload-pack and receive-pack protocols.  The 'agent' capability
+may optionally be sent in both protocols.
+
+All other capabilities are only recognized by the upload-pack (fetch
+from server) process.
+
+multi_ack
+---------
+
+The 'multi_ack' capability allows the server to return "ACK obj-id
+continue" as soon as it finds a commit that it can use as a common
+base, between the client's wants and the client's have set.
+
+By sending this early, the server can potentially head off the client
+from walking any further down that particular branch of the client's
+repository history.  The client may still need to walk down other
+branches, sending have lines for those, until the server has a
+complete cut across the DAG, or the client has said "done".
+
+Without multi_ack, a client sends have lines in --date-order until
+the server has found a common base.  That means the client will send
+have lines that are already known by the server to be common, because
+they overlap in time with another branch that the server hasn't found
+a common base on yet.
+
+For example suppose the client has commits in caps that the server
+doesn't and the server has commits in lower case that the client
+doesn't, as in the following diagram:
+
+       +---- u ---------------------- x
+      /              +----- y
+     /              /
+    a -- b -- c -- d -- E -- F
+       \
+	+--- Q -- R -- S
+
+If the client wants x,y and starts out by saying have F,S, the server
+doesn't know what F,S is.  Eventually the client says "have d" and
+the server sends "ACK d continue" to let the client know to stop
+walking down that line (so don't send c-b-a), but it's not done yet,
+it needs a base for x. The client keeps going with S-R-Q, until a
+gets reached, at which point the server has a clear base and it all
+ends.
+
+Without multi_ack the client would have sent that c-b-a chain anyway,
+interleaved with S-R-Q.
+
+multi_ack_detailed
+------------------
+This is an extension of multi_ack that permits client to better
+understand the server's in-memory state. See pack-protocol.txt,
+section "Packfile Negotiation" for more information.
+
+no-done
+-------
+This capability should only be used with the smart HTTP protocol. If
+multi_ack_detailed and no-done are both present, then the sender is
+free to immediately send a pack following its first "ACK obj-id ready"
+message.
+
+Without no-done in the smart HTTP protocol, the server session would
+end and the client has to make another trip to send "done" before
+the server can send the pack. no-done removes the last round and
+thus slightly reduces latency.
+
+thin-pack
+---------
+
+A thin pack is one with deltas which reference base objects not
+contained within the pack (but are known to exist at the receiving
+end). This can reduce the network traffic significantly, but it
+requires the receiving end to know how to "thicken" these packs by
+adding the missing bases to the pack.
+
+The upload-pack server advertises 'thin-pack' when it can generate
+and send a thin pack. A client requests the 'thin-pack' capability
+when it understands how to "thicken" it, notifying the server that
+it can receive such a pack. A client MUST NOT request the
+'thin-pack' capability if it cannot turn a thin pack into a
+self-contained pack.
+
+Receive-pack, on the other hand, is assumed by default to be able to
+handle thin packs, but can ask the client not to use the feature by
+advertising the 'no-thin' capability. A client MUST NOT send a thin
+pack if the server advertises the 'no-thin' capability.
+
+The reasons for this asymmetry are historical. The receive-pack
+program did not exist until after the invention of thin packs, so
+historically the reference implementation of receive-pack always
+understood thin packs. Adding 'no-thin' later allowed receive-pack
+to disable the feature in a backwards-compatible manner.
+
+
+side-band, side-band-64k
+------------------------
+
+This capability means that server can send, and client understand multiplexed
+progress reports and error info interleaved with the packfile itself.
+
+These two options are mutually exclusive. A modern client always
+favors 'side-band-64k'.
+
+Either mode indicates that the packfile data will be streamed broken
+up into packets of up to either 1000 bytes in the case of 'side_band',
+or 65520 bytes in the case of 'side_band_64k'. Each packet is made up
+of a leading 4-byte pkt-line length of how much data is in the packet,
+followed by a 1-byte stream code, followed by the actual data.
+
+The stream code can be one of:
+
+ 1 - pack data
+ 2 - progress messages
+ 3 - fatal error message just before stream aborts
+
+The "side-band-64k" capability came about as a way for newer clients
+that can handle much larger packets to request packets that are
+actually crammed nearly full, while maintaining backward compatibility
+for the older clients.
+
+Further, with side-band and its up to 1000-byte messages, it's actually
+999 bytes of payload and 1 byte for the stream code. With side-band-64k,
+same deal, you have up to 65519 bytes of data and 1 byte for the stream
+code.
+
+The client MUST send only maximum of one of "side-band" and "side-
+band-64k".  Server MUST diagnose it as an error if client requests
+both.
+
+ofs-delta
+---------
+
+Server can send, and client understand PACKv2 with delta referring to
+its base by position in pack rather than by an obj-id.  That is, they can
+send/read OBJ_OFS_DELTA (aka type 6) in a packfile.
+
+agent
+-----
+
+The server may optionally send a capability of the form `agent=X` to
+notify the client that the server is running version `X`. The client may
+optionally return its own agent string by responding with an `agent=Y`
+capability (but it MUST NOT do so if the server did not mention the
+agent capability). The `X` and `Y` strings may contain any printable
+ASCII characters except space (i.e., the byte range 32 < x < 127), and
+are typically of the form "package/version" (e.g., "git/1.8.3.1"). The
+agent strings are purely informative for statistics and debugging
+purposes, and MUST NOT be used to programmatically assume the presence
+or absence of particular features.
+
+symref
+------
+
+This parameterized capability is used to inform the receiver which symbolic ref
+points to which ref; for example, "symref=HEAD:refs/heads/master" tells the
+receiver that HEAD points to master. This capability can be repeated to
+represent multiple symrefs.
+
+Servers SHOULD include this capability for the HEAD symref if it is one of the
+refs being sent.
+
+Clients MAY use the parameters from this capability to select the proper initial
+branch when cloning a repository.
+
+shallow
+-------
+
+This capability adds "deepen", "shallow" and "unshallow" commands to
+the  fetch-pack/upload-pack protocol so clients can request shallow
+clones.
+
+deepen-since
+------------
+
+This capability adds "deepen-since" command to fetch-pack/upload-pack
+protocol so the client can request shallow clones that are cut at a
+specific time, instead of depth. Internally it's equivalent of doing
+"rev-list --max-age=<timestamp>" on the server side. "deepen-since"
+cannot be used with "deepen".
+
+deepen-not
+----------
+
+This capability adds "deepen-not" command to fetch-pack/upload-pack
+protocol so the client can request shallow clones that are cut at a
+specific revision, instead of depth. Internally it's equivalent of
+doing "rev-list --not <rev>" on the server side. "deepen-not"
+cannot be used with "deepen", but can be used with "deepen-since".
+
+deepen-relative
+---------------
+
+If this capability is requested by the client, the semantics of
+"deepen" command is changed. The "depth" argument is the depth from
+the current shallow boundary, instead of the depth from remote refs.
+
+no-progress
+-----------
+
+The client was started with "git clone -q" or something, and doesn't
+want that side band 2.  Basically the client just says "I do not
+wish to receive stream 2 on sideband, so do not send it to me, and if
+you did, I will drop it on the floor anyway".  However, the sideband
+channel 3 is still used for error responses.
+
+include-tag
+-----------
+
+The 'include-tag' capability is about sending annotated tags if we are
+sending objects they point to.  If we pack an object to the client, and
+a tag object points exactly at that object, we pack the tag object too.
+In general this allows a client to get all new annotated tags when it
+fetches a branch, in a single network connection.
+
+Clients MAY always send include-tag, hardcoding it into a request when
+the server advertises this capability. The decision for a client to
+request include-tag only has to do with the client's desires for tag
+data, whether or not a server had advertised objects in the
+refs/tags/* namespace.
+
+Servers MUST pack the tags if their referrant is packed and the client
+has requested include-tags.
+
+Clients MUST be prepared for the case where a server has ignored
+include-tag and has not actually sent tags in the pack.  In such
+cases the client SHOULD issue a subsequent fetch to acquire the tags
+that include-tag would have otherwise given the client.
+
+The server SHOULD send include-tag, if it supports it, regardless
+of whether or not there are tags available.
+
+report-status
+-------------
+
+The receive-pack process can receive a 'report-status' capability,
+which tells it that the client wants a report of what happened after
+a packfile upload and reference update.  If the pushing client requests
+this capability, after unpacking and updating references the server
+will respond with whether the packfile unpacked successfully and if
+each reference was updated successfully.  If any of those were not
+successful, it will send back an error message.  See pack-protocol.txt
+for example messages.
+
+delete-refs
+-----------
+
+If the server sends back the 'delete-refs' capability, it means that
+it is capable of accepting a zero-id value as the target
+value of a reference update.  It is not sent back by the client, it
+simply informs the client that it can be sent zero-id values
+to delete references.
+
+quiet
+-----
+
+If the receive-pack server advertises the 'quiet' capability, it is
+capable of silencing human-readable progress output which otherwise may
+be shown when processing the received pack. A send-pack client should
+respond with the 'quiet' capability to suppress server-side progress
+reporting if the local progress reporting is also being suppressed
+(e.g., via `push -q`, or if stderr does not go to a tty).
+
+atomic
+------
+
+If the server sends the 'atomic' capability it is capable of accepting
+atomic pushes. If the pushing client requests this capability, the server
+will update the refs in one atomic transaction. Either all refs are
+updated or none.
+
+push-options
+------------
+
+If the server sends the 'push-options' capability it is able to accept
+push options after the update commands have been sent, but before the
+packfile is streamed. If the pushing client requests this capability,
+the server will pass the options to the pre- and post- receive hooks
+that process this push request.
+
+allow-tip-sha1-in-want
+----------------------
+
+If the upload-pack server advertises this capability, fetch-pack may
+send "want" lines with SHA-1s that exist at the server but are not
+advertised by upload-pack.
+
+allow-reachable-sha1-in-want
+----------------------------
+
+If the upload-pack server advertises this capability, fetch-pack may
+send "want" lines with SHA-1s that exist at the server but are not
+advertised by upload-pack.
+
+push-cert=<nonce>
+-----------------
+
+The receive-pack server that advertises this capability is willing
+to accept a signed push certificate, and asks the <nonce> to be
+included in the push certificate.  A send-pack client MUST NOT
+send a push-cert packet unless the receive-pack server advertises
+this capability.
+
+filter
+------
+
+If the upload-pack server advertises the 'filter' capability,
+fetch-pack may send "filter" commands to request a partial clone
+or partial fetch and request that the server omit various objects
+from the packfile.