cannot fetch arm git tree

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 02:47:28PM +0100, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
> Hi Detlef,
> 
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 02:38:11PM +0100, Detlef Vollmann wrote:
> > On 01/16/11 14:42, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > >Let's say you already have a copy of my tree from a month ago, and Linus
> > >has pulled some work from me into his tree, and repacked his tree into one
> > >single pack file.  At the moment, the largest pack file from Linus is
> > >400MB plus a 50MB index.
> > >
> > >You already have most of the contents of that 400MB pack file, but if
> > >you're missing even _one_ object which is contained within it, git will
> > >have to download the _entire_ 400MB pack file and index file to retrieve
> > >it.
> > I thought this has changed with "smart http" in git 1.6.6.
> > Am I missing something?
> Well, not all http repos offer smart http.  E.g. Russell doesn't[1],
> probably because the serving machine doesn't have the power to nice
> serve a repo via git:// or smart http://.

What is smart http?  I don't particularly follow git developments.