Re: git clone -l

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 5, 2008, 00:32 UTC
Message-ID: <7vd4qa3t9t.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LNX.1.00.0803041900080.19665@iabervon.org>

Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> What, exactly, is -l supposed to do for clone? As far as I can tell, we 
> automatically do the local magic if we can. Would it be okay to make 
> "local" default to "if possible", have "-l" mean error if not possible, 
> and have "--no-local" able to avoid using local magic even if we could use 
> it?

It used to be that "-l" meant "When it is local, use hardlink if possible otherwise copy without complaining, as either are cheaper than the pack piped to unpack." Lack of -l meant no local magic.

Recently lack of -l stopped to mean "no local magic". We still do the local magic, but we do not do hardlinks and instead do copies. An "-l" that asks clone across filesystems still falls back to copying but now gets a warning. "--no-hardlinks" does not have any significance anymore, as that is what you would get for a local clone without -l.

The way to refuse local magic is to use file://$path/ explicitly; we do not have --no-local.