Re: git gc & deleted branches

From: Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms@cmu.edu>
Date: May 10, 2008, 05:36 UTC
Message-ID: <87tzh6yb2w.fsf@jeremyms.com>
In-Reply-To: <20080510052548.GA11556@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> On Fri, May 09, 2008 at 09:51:15PM -0400, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
>> When you create a new working directory, you would also create in the
>> original repository a symlink named
>> e.g. orig_repo/.git/peers/<some-arbitrary-name-that-doesn't-matter> that
>> points to the .git directory of the newly created working directory.

> That assumes you _can_ write to the original repository. That may or may
> not be the case, depending on your setup.

Well, I suppose in that case it could print a warning or maybe fail without some "force" option. If you can't write to the repository, then I think it is safe to say that it will never know or care about you, so you will fundamentally have a fragile setup. I'd say that except in very special circumstances, you are better off just not sharing it at all.

Consider, for instance, that even if the repository that you are sharing form never deletes branches and never does non-fast-forward updates of references, it could very well happen to have, due to some temporary operation, some unreferenced object that happens to be exactly the same object that you want to add to your repository. Because you've listed it in info/alternates, you won't write that object to your own repository, but then the source repository will very likely garbage collect the object at some later point, corrupting your repository.

-- 
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard