Re: [PATCH] git-clone.txt: document that pushing from a shallow clone may work

From: Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>
Date: Mar 4, 2009, 22:22 UTC
Message-ID: <20090304222224.GA20335@chistera.yi.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vvdqp5zx9.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

* Junio C Hamano [Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:45:54 -0800]:

> Isn't the rule more or less like:

>     If your shallow repository's history does not extend long enough and
>     the other repository forked before your truncated history, wyou cannot
>     compute the common ancestor and you cannot push out.

Ah, this is helpful, thanks for it and for the rest of the message. Would you take a patch to include this in the git-clone manpage, maybe with an alternative wording? Eg.:

  Pushing from a shallow repository is not supported, but works when
  you're pushing to branches with a common ancestor in your available
  history (so pushing to the remote HEAD should always work).

I *think* the sentence in brackets is correct; I put it there because in my experience is a feature a lot of people around me want.(¹)

  (¹) I realize this may seem odd, people with push access wanting to be
  able to push from a shallow repository. In case somebody is interested
  in the details, there's been discussion in the debian-python lists
  about a possible move to Git. There currently exists a Subversion
  repository with a lot of packages; many people with access just work
  on a few of them, but do the typical random fix on others from time to
  time. And some of them were concerned about downloading all history
  for over a hundred of repositories. (Which was another of the
  conflicting points, how it's very easy to download all the packages in
  Subversion.)

Cheers,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the
dozens.
                -- Michel de Montaigne