Re: [PATCH] git clone depth of 0 not possible.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 8, 2013, 06:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7vip78go6b.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20130108062811.GA3131@elie.Belkin>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Stefan Beller wrote:
>
>> Currently it is not possible to have a shallow depth of
>> just 0, i.e. only one commit in that repository after cloning.
>> The minimum number of commits is 2, caused by depth=1.
>
> Sounds buggy.  Would anything break if we were to make --depth=1 mean
> "1 deep, including the tip commit"?

As long as we do not change the meaning of the "shallow" count going over the wire (i.e. the number we receive from the user will be fudged, so that user's "depth 1" that used to mean "the tip and one behind it" is expressed as "depth 2" at the end-user level, and we send over the wire the number that corresponded to the old "depth 1"), I do not think anything will break, and then --depth=0 may magically start meaning "only the tip; its immediate parents will not be transferred and recorded as the shallow boundary in the receiving repository".

I do not mind carrying such a (technially) backward incompatible change in jn/clone-2.0-depth-off-by-one branch, keep it cooking in 'next' for a while and push it out together with other "2.0" topics in a future release ;-).