Re: [PATCH] Introduce core.keepHardLinks

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Oct 13, 2008, 16:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20081013162351.GQ4856@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <20081013162132.GB20371@leksak.fem-net>

Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > and I would have expected others to need a lot less arguments 
> > to see it that way, too.
> 
> Despite the fact that I've never used hardlinks in a git repository, I
> would have expected git to keep them.  So I'm one of the "others" who
> thinks this config option is just sane (and should perhaps even be
> enabled by default, if it does not break stuff on file systems that do
> not have a hardlink feature... but ok)

My problem is many users do "cp -rl a b" to clone a->b and hardlink the working directory. They expect "cd b && git checkout foo" to then only unlink the paths that differ. Updating the original inode would break repository a.

Its a change in behavior, to some of our oldest users. So it can't really be on by default.

-- 
Shawn.