To graft or not to graft... (Re: Recovering from repository corruption)

From: Stephen R. van den Berg <srb@cuci.nl>
Date: Jun 11, 2008, 23:21 UTC
Message-ID: <20080611232126.GA9054@cuci.nl>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0806101403080.3101@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>more corruption by hiding things (ie if you clone a repo with a grafts 
>file, the result will now have neither the grafts file _nor_ the state 
>that was hidden by it, so the result is guaranteed to be corrupt).

This is kind of confusing. As I understood it from the few shreds of documentation that actually mention the grafts file, the grafts file is *not* being cloned. Therefore, my assumption was that cloning a repository that has a grafts file gives an identical result to cloning the same repository *without* the grafts file present.

As I understand it now, the cloning process actually peeks at the grafts file while cloning, and then doesn't copy it. This results in a rather confusingly corrupt clone.

I suggest two things:
a. That during the cloning process, the grafts file is completely
   disregarded in any case at first.
b. Preferably the grafts file is copied as well (after cloning).  I
   never really understood why the file is not being copied in the first
   place (anyone care to explain that?).

-- 
Sincerely,
           Stephen R. van den Berg.

Differentiation is an integral part of calculus.