Re: Borrowing objects from nearby repositories

> I am considering developing a new feature, and I'd like to poll the group for opinions.
>
> Background: A couple years ago, I wrote a set of scripts that speed up cloning of frequently used repositories.  The scripts utilize a bare Git repository located at a known location, and automate providing a --reference parameter to `git clone` and `git submodule update`.  Recently, some coworkers of mine expressed an interest in using the scripts, so I published the current version of my scripts, called `git repocache`, described at the bottom of <https://github.com/andrewkeller/ak-git-tools>.
>
> Slowly, it has occurred to me that this feature, or something similar to it, may be worth adding to Git, so I've been thinking about the best approach.  Here's my best idea so far:
>
> 1)  Introduce '--borrow' to `git-fetch`.  This would behave similarly to '--reference', except that it operates on a temporary basis, and does not assume that the reference repository will exist after the operation completes, so any used objects are copied into the local objects database.  In theory, this mechanism would be distinct from '--reference', so if both are used, some objects would be copied, and some objects would be accessible via a reference repository referenced by the alternates file.