Re: [RFC] shallow clone

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@hogyros.de> writes:

>> - disallow fetching from this repo, and
>
> Why? It's perfectly acceptable to pull from an incomplete repo, as
> long as you don't care about the old history.

I agree.  As long as the cloned one can record itself as a
shallow one (and with what epochs), I do not see a reason to
forbid second generation clone from a shallow repository.

> Hrm, I think there should also be a way to shrink a repo and "forget"
> old history occasionally (obviously, use of that feature would be
> highly discouraged).

I do not think of a reason to discourage it, and I think you can
do the "forgetting" part with the current set of tools.  Choose
appropriate cauterizing points, set up info/grafts and running
"repack -a -d" would be sufficient.

> IMO, it may be a lot more robust to just have a list of "cutoff"
> object ids in .git/shallow instead of messing with grafts here, as
> adding or removing a line from that file is an easier thing to do for
> porcelain (or by hand) than rewriting the grafts file. Whether that
> list would be inclusive or exclusive would need to be decided still.

I would rather not to have .git/shallow nor .git/shallow_start.

Cauterizing is not any more special than other grafts entries.
If you have grafted historical kernel repository behind the
official kernel repository with 2.6.12-rc2 epoch, I do not think
of any reason to forbid people from cloning such with the
grafts.