- overview/hashing/store-api/backends/gc/ops specs + README index, all draft status with YAML frontmatter and cross-referenced ADR/OQ - ADR-001: substrate posture (store layer alkcall-free = family conformance, not deviation) + ops placement decided (feature-gated module, no consumer-waited deferral) - ADR-002: canonical git-blob-sha-256 + key encoding — the declared wire-format ADR (one-way door) - ADR-003: backend contract, sqlite/fs/mem tiers, pure-function dispatch, no migration, unknown-length buffering semantics pinned - ADR-004: exactly two production backends; manifest/path-tree layers are consumer-side (the corrected two-vs-three-backends framing) - ADR-005: pooled CAS, three liveness sources, delete windows with pin-before-publish + delete-time arbitration (race closed), no ambient scheduling - ADR-006: whole-blob verification; chunk-tree encodings excluded by scoping, not deferred on a paused consumer - open-questions.md: OQ-BL-01..06 resolved with ADR cross-refs; OQ-07 /08 externally-owned, OQ-09 deferred(scope) with SDD tracker task - AGENTS.md: status updated to Phase 1, gix-odb path corrected Verification: cargo test / clippy -D warnings / fmt --check clean
4.5 KiB
status, last_updated
| status | last_updated |
|---|---|
| draft | 2026-10-01 |
Hashing and keys
What this is
The content-address layer: the canonical hash derivation every entry is
keyed under, the tolerated legacy algorithm, the typed Key/Digest
surface the store API speaks, and the physical byte encoding of keys
inside backends. This is the crate's one-way door: key byte layouts are
persisted in backend rows and filenames, survive digest-layer evolution,
and must precede any wire consumer (AGENTS convention 5; phase-0 OQ-BL-03
residual).
The hash family
Three tiers (ADR-002 §Decision; resolved from OQ-BL-03 after the "multi-hash" premise dissolved — nothing forces BLAKE3 once iroh-blobs' inheritance is rejected):
- Canonical —
git-blob-sha-256: the git oid derivationH("blob <len>\0" + content)with SHA-256, uncompressed content. Chosen because alkgit forces git's derivation by protocol definition, and every other consumer (workspaces, appfile) sees addresses, not algorithms — so one algorithm domain makes the pool one address space and cross-consumer dedup free by construction (ADR-005). - Tolerated legacy —
git-blob-sha-1: existing git repositories are overwhelmingly SHA-1; the store accepts them under the same preamble discipline. Git's own collision-hardened SHA-1 threat model is inherited verbatim; the store adds nothing and weakens nothing. - Not present — BLAKE3: demoted out of the crate entirely. If a
chunk-tree transfer encoding is ever adopted, it is a new decision at
a new layer (ADR-006); its verified whole-contents would register as
ordinary
git-blob-sha-256entries.
Security posture: one algorithm across consumers is safe here — SHA-256 has no practical cross-protocol ambiguity at these input shapes, and the preamble domain-separates the derivation (ADR-002 §Consequences).
Key encoding (the one-way door)
Physical key bytes inside backends (POC #1 finding 5, validated in the interop test where an oid produced by external git addresses the same pool entry the store puts):
- Algorithm identity is part of the key itself — a per-store single-algorithm configuration cannot express git-sha-256 and git-sha-1 coexisting in one flat pool, which the external-oid test proves is required.
- Fixed-length, enum-tagged:
1 algorithm byte + digest bytes(32 for sha-256, 20 for sha-1). The POC's extra "kind" tag byte is dropped — there is exactly one key kind. Algorithm bytes are assigned from a single registry constant in ADR-002 so external producers can compute them. - Sort stability: fixed-length enum-tagged keys sort cleanly in a total order — required for the sweep's live-set diffs (list() walks are plain range scans; ADR-005).
- Opaque to backends: the
Backendtrait speaks opaque byte keys (ADR-003); only the store core constructs and interprets typed keys.
The Key/Digest surface (WHAT the API exposes)
Digest— an algorithm + digest pair; construction via the canonical derivation from content (known length) or from a pre-computed pair (interop:from_git_oid_hexshape validated in POC #1 finding 4).Key— the typed wrapper;as_bytes()/from_bytes()are the only conversions across the backend boundary. Malformed key bytes (truncated, unknown algorithm) are rejects, never guesses — the POC's length-checking test is the standard.- Verification semantics ride the whole-blob posture (ADR-006): put and get paths hash-check against the canonical derivation; there is no per-range hash relationship under this derivation (preamble includes the length), which is the constraint ADR-006 documents rather than works around.
Design Decisions
| ADR | Decision | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 002 | Canonical hash + key encoding | three-tier hash policy; algorithm-in-key byte layout; the declared wire-format ADR |
Open Questions
None owned by this document. The interop surface alkgit ultimately needs (oid formats, hex/binary conventions at its boundary) is OQ-07 — alkgit's question, not a key-encoding question.
References
docs/research/phase-0.mdOQ-BL-03 (resolution + key-encoding mechanics)docs/research/poc-trait-dispatch-findings.mdfindings 4/5 (byte-exact git CLI validation; tagged-key coexistence)- gix-odb (
/workspace/gitoxide/gix-odb) — the consumer-side baseline for object reads/writes - ADR-002; ADR-003 (opaque byte keys at the backend boundary); ADR-006 (what verification is possible under this derivation)