Re: [PATCH] Disable USE_SYMLINK_HEAD by default

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Nov 15, 2005, 07:03 UTC
Message-ID: <7vveyuqto5.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <1132034390.22207.18.camel@dv>

Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org> writes:

> Applying this patch before 1.0 may be controversial,...

If I am not mistaken, I thought the last thread on the list showed general consensus that symlinks were preferred when available. So applying this patch anytime would be controversial...

> but I think there is a very good reason for that.

Which is...?  I do not think this paragraph justifies it:

> There should be exactly one git 1.0 repository format.  Now we
> have two that are present in the sources and that have
> received testing from the git users.

The one format is that .git/HEAD can either be a symlink or regular file text symref; both variants are tested -- wouldn't that be good enough?

The only thing I can think of that might be inconvenient is if you try doing "cp -a" off of a filesystem that supports symlinks to another filesystem that does not -- probably that would fail copying the symlinked .git/HEAD. But if that is the problem, you could always git-clone, which should do the right thing, I think.