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From:   Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To:     anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com>
Cc:     =?utf-8?B?w4Z2YXIgQXJuZmrDtnLDsA==?= Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>,
        Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>,
        Git Mailing List <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Round-tripping fast-export/import changes commit hashes
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Date:   Mon, 01 Mar 2021 09:34:31 -0800
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        (anatoly techtonik's message of "Mon, 1 Mar 2021 10:44:12 +0300")
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anatoly techtonik <techtonik@gmail.com> writes:

> Is fast-export/import the only way to filter information in `git`? Maybe there
> is a slow json-export/import tool that gives a complete representation of all
> events in a repository? Or API that can be used to serialize and import that
> stream?

I do not think representation is a problem.

It is just that the output stream of fast-export is designed to be
"filtered" and the expected use case is to modify the stream somehow
before feeding it to fast-import.  And because every object name and
commit & tag signature depends on everything that they can reach,
even a single bit change in an earlier part of the history will
invalidate any and all signatures on objects that can reach it.  So
instead of originally-signed objects whose signatures are now
invalid, "fast-export | fast-import" pipeline would give you
originally-signed objects whose signatures are stripped.

Admittedly, there is a narrow use case where such a signature
invalidation is not an issue.  If you run fast-export and feed that
straight into fast-import without doing any modification to the
stream, then you are getting a bit-for-bit identical copy.

But "git clone --mirror" is a much better way to do get such a
bit-for-bit identical history and objects.  And if you want to do so
with sneakernet, you can create a bundle file, sneakernet it to your
destination, and then clone from the bundle.

So...