From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:03:38 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Disable USE_SYMLINK_HEAD by default Message-ID: <7vveyuqto5.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: <1132034390.22207.18.camel@dv> Pavel Roskin 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.