From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:19:31 GMT
Subject: Re: 'git clone' doesn't use alternates automatically?
Message-ID: <7v7i4b2bto.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090131215514.GB9415@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

>   - without either, copy alternates from origin, but _don't_ use
>     alternates while cloning

Are you talking about a local clone optimization that does hardlink from
the source repository?

I am fairly certain that copying alternates from the source repository was
not an intended behaviour but was a consequence of lazy coding of how we
copy (or link) everything from it.  The original was literally the simple
matter of:

    find objects ! -type d -print | cpio $cpio_quiet_flag -pumd$l "$GIT_DIR/"

whose intention was to copy objects/?? and objects/pack/. and it wasn't
even part of the design consideration to worry about what would happen to
the alternates the source repository might have in objects/info/.