On Sun, Aug 26, 2007 at 10:15:24AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> It's easier to optimize on the *client* side: just do the initial clone 
> with rsync/http (and "git gc" it on the client afterwards), and then 
> change it to the git native protocol after the clone.

When I was working on Xen two years ago, they did the same thing with
their Mercurial repository. They had a proper repo that handled all the
push and fetch traffic, and a cron job would periodically pull from that
into a second repo. This second one was served by http. People were
encouraged to download the seed repo and then do a fetch (from the main
one) immediately.

I don't know whether they still do that, but in any case it shows your
idea is not unprecedented.

-- 
Kanga  said to Roo,  "Drink up  your milk  first, dear, and  talk after-
wards." So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do
both at once... and had to be  patted on the back  and dried for quite a
long time afterwards.                     A. A. Milne, 'Winnie-the-Pooh'