Re: [RFC] shallow clone

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Jan 30, 2006, 19:25 UTC
Message-ID: <7v64o18qn4.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <43DDFF5C.30803@hogyros.de>

Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@hogyros.de> writes:

>> - disallow fetching from this repo, and
>
> Why? It's perfectly acceptable to pull from an incomplete repo, as
> long as you don't care about the old history.

I agree. As long as the cloned one can record itself as a shallow one (and with what epochs), I do not see a reason to forbid second generation clone from a shallow repository.

> Hrm, I think there should also be a way to shrink a repo and "forget"
> old history occasionally (obviously, use of that feature would be
> highly discouraged).

I do not think of a reason to discourage it, and I think you can do the "forgetting" part with the current set of tools. Choose appropriate cauterizing points, set up info/grafts and running "repack -a -d" would be sufficient.

Show 5 quoted lines

> IMO, it may be a lot more robust to just have a list of "cutoff"
> object ids in .git/shallow instead of messing with grafts here, as
> adding or removing a line from that file is an easier thing to do for
> porcelain (or by hand) than rewriting the grafts file. Whether that
> list would be inclusive or exclusive would need to be decided still.

I would rather not to have .git/shallow nor .git/shallow_start.

Cauterizing is not any more special than other grafts entries. If you have grafted historical kernel repository behind the official kernel repository with 2.6.12-rc2 epoch, I do not think of any reason to forbid people from cloning such with the grafts.