Re: is there a "symlink" option for cloning a repo in a separate filesystem?

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

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On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 04:22:32AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>   reading "man git-clone", and i understand the mechanics of the local
> protocol, so that if i run:
> 
>   $ git clone /path/to/repo
> 
> then "files under .git/objects/ directory are hardlinked to save space
> when possible."
> 
>   but if the repo is in a separate filesystem, or on an NFS mount,
> hardlinks clearly won't work, so what happens then? does it default
> all the way back to regular copies? is there no intermediate symlink
> feature that would still work? (i suspect i am far from the first
> person to wonder this.)

I believe the current behavior is to make a copy.  However, if the
source repo is reasonably well packed, you won't be copying that many
files anyway.  You can always run git gc in the source repo to speed up
that process if you're going to be making many clones.

As Torsten pointed out, --reference is available.  If your source
repository is ephemeral (or otherwise won't last as long the destination
repository), then you won't want to use that option, as you'll lose
data.  The --shared option documents all the sharp edges.
-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
https://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

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