are encoded in 7-bit ASCII and the encoding cannot contain a NUL
byte (iow, this is a UNIX pathname).
+ (Version 4) In version 4, the entry path name is prefix-compressed
+ relative to the path name for the previous entry (the very first
+ entry is encoded as if the path name for the previous entry is an
+ empty string). At the beginning of an entry, an integer N in the
+ variable width encoding (the same encoding as the offset is encoded
+ for OFS_DELTA pack entries; see pack-format.txt) is stored, followed
+ by a NUL-terminated string S. Removing N bytes from the end of the
+ path name for the previous entry, and replacing it with the string S
+ yields the path name for this entry.
+
1-8 nul bytes as necessary to pad the entry to a multiple of eight bytes
while keeping the name NUL-terminated.
+ (Version 4) In version 4, the padding after the pathname does not
+ exist.
+
== Extensions
=== Cached tree
this span of index as a tree.
An entry can be in an invalidated state and is represented by having
- -1 in the entry_count field. In this case, there is no object name
- and the next entry starts immediately after the newline.
+ a negative number in the entry_count field. In this case, there is no
+ object name and the next entry starts immediately after the newline.
+ When writing an invalid entry, -1 should always be used as entry_count.
The entries are written out in the top-down, depth-first order. The
first entry represents the root level of the repository, followed by the