From: Xavier Morel <xmo@odoo.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:04:01 GMT
Subject: git clone --bundle-uri: follow redirects?
Message-ID: <0a5a8da9-5565-41b0-9ac2-7d11ae116b3a@odoo.com>

As I was playing with --bundle-uri again, I found a new oddity: git 
doesn't seem to follow redirects when resolving the URI, and the error 
feedback is less than ideal.

One of the few projects which seem to publicly use and advertise bundles 
(or at least one of the few that's easy to find) is the kernel, they 
have a pages recommending either using a custom script[0] or fetching 
the bundle locally then cloning it[1] -- the latter in order to resume 
the bundle download on poor connections. I figured I could just

     git clone 
--bundle-uri=https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/clone.bundle 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git

however that immediately prints

     warning: failed to download bundle from URI 
'https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/clone.bundle'
     warning: failed to fetch objects from bundle URI 
'https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/clone.bundle'

 From what I understand, this is because the bundle-uri above is a 
permanent redirect to 
https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/scm/.bundles/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux/clone.bundle, 
and while wget will follow redirects by default that is not the case of 
curl. Thus git finds itself with essentially no content, and definitely 
not bundle content.

[0]: https://www.kernel.org/best-way-to-do-linux-clones-for-your-ci.html
[1]: https://www.kernel.org/cloning-linux-from-a-bundle.html