Linus on Git and SHA-1

Re:Linus on Git and SHA-1 by hdhzy on Saturday February 25, 2017 @04:23PM (#13733915)

I think the truncation is considered because a lot of software assumes git commit id has 160 bit length. It's not because of performance.

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Re:Linus on Git and SHA-1 by hermitdev on Saturday February 25, 2017 @04:48PM (#13734045)

There are only 2 reasonable rationales for the 160 bit restriction: it was arbitrary because that was the length of the chosen hash, or for performance (and no one will ever need more that 640kb of RAM, or 160 bits of hash). I'm guessing it was probably the first, though, and Linus designed for the immediate now, and not for the future.

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Re:Linus on Git and SHA-1 by derefr on Saturday February 25, 2017 @07:31PM (#13734839)

It's not even a "restriction", so much as a fragile ecosystem of tools that parse the output of git commands. A lot of them assume particular column widths.

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