Re: Git checkout preserve timestamp?

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Mar 6, 2007, 00:32 UTC
Message-ID: <7vodn7w6rz.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <87zm6rqlpn.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org>

Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> This all sounds a lot like git-clone's "alternate" code.
> ...
> My own work habits are very similar to Bill Lear's, but my projects'
> build times are small enough that it's less pain to rebuild half the
> project than to propagate changes recorded under $GIT_DIR between
> local branches.  I have not found a git workflow that makes me
> entirely happy, but I suspect I just don't know the magic words.

These days I use a few working trees that are connected to my primary repository (which also has a working tree). The primary repository is in /src/git, and other ones look like this:

: gitster git.wk0; ls -l .git/ total 120 drwxrwsr-x 3 junio src 4096 Mar 5 16:22 ./ drwxrwsr-x 15 junio src 16384 Mar 5 16:23 ../ -rw-rw-r-- 1 junio src 41 Mar 5 16:22 HEAD lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 27 Mar 3 22:53 config -> /src/git/.git/config lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 26 Mar 3 22:53 hooks -> /src/git/.git/hooks/ -rw-rw-r-- 1 junio src 82455 Mar 5 16:22 index lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 25 Mar 3 22:53 info -> /src/git/.git/info/ drwxrwsr-x 3 junio src 4096 Mar 3 22:59 logs/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 28 Mar 3 22:53 objects -> /src/git/.git/objects/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 32 Mar 3 22:53 packed-refs -> /src/git/.git/packed-refs lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 25 Mar 3 22:53 refs -> /src/git/.git/refs/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 28 Mar 3 22:53 remotes -> /src/git/.git/remotes/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 junio src 29 Mar 3 22:53 rr-cache -> /src/git/.git/rr-cache/

It shares everything other than HEAD and the index (the reflog for branches are also shared by a symlink .git/logs/refs pointing at the one in the primary repository).

This risks confusion for an uninitiated if you update a ref that is checked out in another working tree, but modulo that caveat it works reasonably well.

We might want to add an option to 'git-clone' to create something like this, but I am somewhat worried about the newbie confusion factor. Perhaps...

$ git clone --i-know-what-i-am-doing-give-me-an-alternate-working-tree \
  /src/git /src/git.wk0