Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
docs: clarify remote restrictions for git-upload-archive
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
Commits ee27ca4 and 0f544ee introduced rules by which
git-upload-archive would restrict clients from accessing
unreachable objects. However, we never documented those
rules anywhere, nor their reason for being. Let's do so now.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <[email protected]>
  • Loading branch information
peff authored and gitster committed Feb 28, 2014
1 parent 5f95c9f commit 69897bc
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 2 changed files with 30 additions and 1 deletion.
5 changes: 4 additions & 1 deletion Documentation/git-archive.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -65,7 +65,10 @@ OPTIONS

--remote=<repo>::
Instead of making a tar archive from the local repository,
retrieve a tar archive from a remote repository.
retrieve a tar archive from a remote repository. Note that the
remote repository may place restrictions on which sha1
expressions may be allowed in `<tree-ish>`. See
linkgit:git-upload-archive[1] for details.

--exec=<git-upload-archive>::
Used with --remote to specify the path to the
Expand Down
26 changes: 26 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/git-upload-archive.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -20,6 +20,32 @@ This command is usually not invoked directly by the end user. The UI
for the protocol is on the 'git archive' side, and the program pair
is meant to be used to get an archive from a remote repository.

SECURITY
--------

In order to protect the privacy of objects that have been removed from
history but may not yet have been pruned, `git-upload-archive` avoids
serving archives for commits and trees that are not reachable from the
repository's refs. However, because calculating object reachability is
computationally expensive, `git-upload-archive` implements a stricter
but easier-to-check set of rules:

1. Clients may request a commit or tree that is pointed to directly by
a ref. E.g., `git archive --remote=origin v1.0`.

2. Clients may request a sub-tree within a commit or tree using the
`ref:path` syntax. E.g., `git archive --remote=origin v1.0:Documentation`.

3. Clients may _not_ use other sha1 expressions, even if the end
result is reachable. E.g., neither a relative commit like `master^`
nor a literal sha1 like `abcd1234` is allowed, even if the result
is reachable from the refs.

Note that rule 3 disallows many cases that do not have any privacy
implications. These rules are subject to change in future versions of
git, and the server accessed by `git archive --remote` may or may not
follow these exact rules.

OPTIONS
-------
<directory>::
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 69897bc

Please sign in to comment.