also sprach Ben Gamari <bgamari@gmail.com> [2010.02.18.1810 +1300]:
> Yeah, this is a bit of a bummer. This is really a stretch, but I wonder
> if the git folks would accept patches/minor database semantics changes
> in the name of making git more flexible as a general purpose object
> database. I really doubt it, but you never know.

I am pretty sure they won't. Git is a content tracker, not a general
purpose filesystem. It's a bit of a shame.

> > Instead of nested subtrees, think of 16 subtrees forming
> > a level-1 hash table, or 256 for level-2, which really *ought*
> > to be enough.
> > 
> > Anyway, rewriting a tree object is pretty much exactly the same
> > as removing a line (e.g. a message ID) from a file (e.g. a tag),
> > as that file would have to be fully rewritten.
> > 
> This is very true, but exactly do you mean by this statement?

That any form of tag-to-message mapping will be expensive when you
have a million messages referenced. If you used symlinks like mairix
does, any manipulation would require changes to the directory index,
which — curiously — functions much like the subtree approach you
proposed.

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