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> It runs them on pushes Sure, because pushes are how you update a reference. That’s really what triggers an action: a reference changing. And there could be a

by orf 2mo ago

> It runs them on pushes Sure, because pushes are how you update a reference. That’s really what triggers an action: a reference changing. And there could be a bunch of those in a push. A commit costs storage, you’ve got secret scanning, it needs to be indexed in a way that can be referenced in commit messages and comments, a commit message itself can close issues or reference other PRs, stored and served individually and immediately via the web UI or git clients, etc etc. It’s also like… the core unit of git.

jeremyjh 2mo ago
None of the things you mention - indexing or secret scan would be done individually for each commit. As I already said, this would be a log of all commits in the range pushed - it would be scanned once for those things. There is no need for a loop running over a range of commits and processing each one.
- charrondev 2mo ago
  There 100% is at least for things like secret scanning and message parsing. Secret scanning needs to make sure my repo as a whole has no secrets. It’s not acceptable to have 1 commit introducing it and 1 removing it because the secret is still recoverable. Every commit is also surely an entry in a database somewhere. I can navigate in GitHub directly to any individual commit so there is definitely some overhead of some type.
  - jeremyjh 1mo ago
    You are right about secret scanning, but its worth noting that is only enabled by default on public repositories. It is an extra paid feature for organizations on a teams or enterprise subscription, and isn't available at all for individual owned repositories outside of an enterprise subscription. And yes, I agree there is indexing of commits, but that is a batch insert from a log.
  - tremon 1mo ago
    It's not necessary to perform secret scanning on a per-commit basis. The most efficient way is to just scan all blob objects being pushed; there is no reason to even be aware of an object's location (tree path or commit) except for diagnostic messages. > I can navigate in GitHub directly to any individual commit You can do the same with the git command line client. The overhead you claim is already in the git on-disk format. Github might very well duplicate this information in a database somewhere, but it doesn't follow from your observation.

by orf 2mo ago

jeremyjh 2mo ago

None of the things you mention - indexing or secret scan would be done individually for each commit. As I already said, this would be a log of all commits in the range pushed - it would be scanned once for those things. There is no need for a loop running over a range of commits and processing each one.

charrondev 2mo ago
There 100% is at least for things like secret scanning and message parsing. Secret scanning needs to make sure my repo as a whole has no secrets. It’s not acceptable to have 1 commit introducing it and 1 removing it because the secret is still recoverable. Every commit is also surely an entry in a database somewhere. I can navigate in GitHub directly to any individual commit so there is definitely some overhead of some type.
- jeremyjh 1mo ago
  You are right about secret scanning, but its worth noting that is only enabled by default on public repositories. It is an extra paid feature for organizations on a teams or enterprise subscription, and isn't available at all for individual owned repositories outside of an enterprise subscription. And yes, I agree there is indexing of commits, but that is a batch insert from a log.
- tremon 1mo ago
  It's not necessary to perform secret scanning on a per-commit basis. The most efficient way is to just scan all blob objects being pushed; there is no reason to even be aware of an object's location (tree path or commit) except for diagnostic messages. > I can navigate in GitHub directly to any individual commit You can do the same with the git command line client. The overhead you claim is already in the git on-disk format. Github might very well duplicate this information in a database somewhere, but it doesn't follow from your observation.