what is snappy fr?

This repository is a customized version of Snappy, a tool that compresses and decompresses data quickly. It is maintained by the team behind CockroachDB, a distributed database system, and exists specifically to support CockroachDB's internal needs rather than as a standalone product. The original Snappy was built by Google to squeeze data into smaller sizes so it takes up less storage space and less time to transmit. CockroachDB uses this compression under the hood to manage database data efficiently. The team needed their own copy of the Snappy codebase for two practical reasons: to apply custom tweaks specific to CockroachDB, and to have a stable, company-controlled location that their main database project can always point to without risk of the code disappearing. The audience here is really just the CockroachDB engineering team and contributors. If you are building or modifying CockroachDB and need to change how it compresses data, you would follow the process outlined in this repo: make your changes on a feature branch, update the reference in the main CockroachDB project, get it reviewed, and then carefully merge your changes into a permanent release branch. The instructions emphasize never force-pushing changes, because the main database project depends on specific historical versions of this code remaining intact. What is notable is the tradeoff between flexibility and stability. By maintaining their own fork, the CockroachDB team gains the freedom to patch Snappy on their own schedule. But they also take on the responsibility of preserving those custom versions indefinitely, since their main database product depends on those specific code snapshots staying available. The strict rules around branching and force-pushes reflect this need for permanence.