Re: How to extract files out of a "git bundle", no matter what?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 19, 2008, 20:21 UTC
Message-ID: <20081219202118.GA26513@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <87zlirc49l.fsf@jidanni.org>

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 04:13:26AM +0800, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:

> There must be a way to make a "phony tree" or whatever to "attach to"
> so extraction can proceed. Be sure to spell it all out on the
> git-bundle man page as a reference in case some non-computer people
> need to do aforementioned emergency extraction one day.

No, that information may not even be in the bundle at all (unless it is a bundle that has a 0-ref basis). In particular, if a bundle contains changes between some commit A and some commit B, then:

  - files that were not changed between A and B will not be included at
    all

  - the object pack in the bundle is "thin", meaning it may contain
    deltas against objects that are reachable from A, but not B. So even
    _within_ a changed file, you may see only the changes from A to B.

If the bundle has a 0-ref basis, then you can clone straight from the bundle, which must have everything.

-Peff