Re: should git download missing objects?

From: Alex Riesen <fork0@t-online.de>
Date: Nov 13, 2006, 19:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20061113194532.GA4547@steel.home>
In-Reply-To: <7vwt60bggs.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano, Sun, Nov 12, 2006 20:41:23 +0100:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Since this is not everyday anyway, a far easier way would be to
> clone-pack from the upstream into a new repository, take the
> pack you downloaded from that new repository and mv it into your
> corrupt repository.  You can run fsck-objects to see if you got
> back everything you lost earlier.

I get into such a situation annoyingly often, by using "git clone -l -s from to" and doing some "cleanup" in the origin repository. For example, it happens that I remove a tag, or a branch, and do a repack or prune afterwards. The related repositories, which had "accidentally" referenced the pruned objects become "corrupt", as you put it.

At the moment, if I run into the situation, I copy packs/objects from all repos I have (objects/info/alternates are useful here too), run a fsck-objects/repack and hope nothing is lost. It works, as I almost always have "accidental" backups somewhere, but is kind of annoying to setup. A tool to do this job more effectively will be very handy (at least, it wont have to copy gigabytes of data over switched windows network. Not often, I hope. Not _so_ many gigabytes, possibly).