From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: Git-aware HTTP transport Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:43:28 -0700 Message-ID: <48B6E3C0.4010608@zytor.com> References: <20080826012643.GD26523@spearce.org> <48B36BCA.8060103@zytor.com> <20080826145857.GF26523@spearce.org> <48B4303C.3080409@zytor.com> <20080826172648.GK26523@spearce.org> <48B485F8.5030109@zytor.com> <20080828035018.GA10010@spearce.org> <7vhc95iwcs.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> <20080828145706.GB21072@spearce.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Shawn O. Pearce" , Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org To: david@lang.hm X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Aug 28 19:46:59 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KYlZg-00068W-JQ for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:46:25 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756316AbYH1RoJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:09 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756312AbYH1RoI (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:08 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:54313 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756028AbYH1RoH (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:07 -0400 Received: from mail.hos.anvin.org (c-98-210-181-100.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [98.210.181.100]) (authenticated bits=0) by terminus.zytor.com (8.14.2/8.14.1) with ESMTP id m7SHhX0B006262 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:43:34 -0700 Received: from tazenda.hos.anvin.org (tazenda.hos.anvin.org [172.27.0.16]) by mail.hos.anvin.org (8.14.2/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m7SHhXC3026409; Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:43:33 -0700 Received: from tazenda.hos.anvin.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by tazenda.hos.anvin.org (8.14.2/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m7SHhSGC029797; Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:43:28 -0700 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) In-Reply-To: X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.93.3/8109/Thu Aug 28 07:33:58 2008 on terminus.zytor.com X-Virus-Status: Clean Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: david@lang.hm wrote: > except that HTTP cannot transport binary data, if you feed it binary > data it then encodes it into 7-bit safe forms for transport. Total utter bunk. You're thinking of email and news, which had to deal with broken legacy code. HTTP has *always* been binary clean. It does not encode anything into 7-bit safe anything. The only "encoding" that it ever does is HTTP/1.1's chunked encoding, which is a way to deal with the fact that it might not always know the total length of the data before it starts the transfer; it sends the data in arbitrary-sized "chunks" prefixed by a byte count. It does this to support connection caching in HTTP/1.1; HTTP/1.0 would simply close the connection to indicate end of (binary) data. -hpa