This is interesting, a few disconnected points: - You should post this to the Git mailing list. We don't bite, and a lot of people would be interested in the d

This is interesting, a few disconnected points: - You should post this to the Git mailing list. We don't bite, and a lot of people would be interested in the details of how it works there. - If you haven't you should check out git-annex. It solves an entirely different problem, but much of the distributed custom merging of histories, using git for ad-hoc metadata etc. is the same problem you're solving. - You should be aware if you aren't that the design of having a ref per bug has some drawbacks, some operations in git are O(n) the number of refs. - It would be really interesting to see some write-up on how the format you're using compares to the format Fossil uses for its bugs. I think some of what Fossil does wouldn't be possible to do in git due to its simpler data model, but still, such a comparison would be educational.