And that's before you take into account that the staging area's index makes some very interesting decisions: - Maximum file size of 4g -- but this limit is onl

And that's before you take into account that the staging area's index makes some very interesting decisions: - Maximum file size of 4g -- but this limit is only present in the staging area, which means it's possible to construct repos with files that can't be checked out into the index. - Dates have the year 2038 problem. - Contains non-portable stat fields like the device the file was on. - Requires a complete rewrite of the whole index file on every change, making it scale O(n) in the size of the repository. - Requires padding of data fields to 8 bytes -- but then has 12 byte header which the fields are packed after, making all of them misaligned to 4 bytes. The whole thing screams "thoughtless, bleary-eyed 3 AM hack"