gix-transport for server

[NicholasLYang]

Summary 💡

I'm looking to implement the server portion of the git pack protocol, i.e. stuff like upload-pack. As far as I can tell, gitoxide doesn't do this yet. How much of it is implemented? I can only find references to client code in gix-transport and gix-protocol.

Motivation 🔦

I'm looking to write my own git server in Rust, mostly for fun. I'm okay with writing my own git pack serializer/deserializer, but it'd be easier to build off of gitoxide.

[Byron]

It would definitely be great to have that!

I recommend to implement upload-pack first as it naturally has to deal with the protocol while just using stdin/stdout. There is a tracking ticket for that as well.

An initial analysis of the server side was put into this tracking ticket.

And as it's not mentioned anywhere possibly, there is a gix free pack create command which can be used to see how packs can be created in a streaming fashion.

My recommendation would be to use gitoxide's pack creation, and to try to use (and/or adapt) gix-transport. The protocol portion in gix-protocol might be usable, but the less you try to integrate with these the less you are slowed by their client-centricity. Ideally, you would be able to produce a working gix upload-pack by cobbling it together, which would already yield a lot of experience that may one day help to integrate it into the gix-protocol and gix-transport crates.

In any case, other plumbing crates like gix-pack and gix-revwalk should already be very usable for use, and probably also the gix top-level to more easily interact with a Git repository.

I hope that helps.