Re: "git clone --shallow-exclude ...", fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly

From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 15, 2019, 12:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8DVRJ4DG6PEkFuzytOQJ7RX6GMaHd4BRQTR9N7Y9V6fqQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1903150809070.26709@localhost.localdomain>

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 7:17 PM Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

>
>
>   probably doing something idiotic but i'm enumerating variations of
> shallow cloning, and tried the following:
>
> $ git clone --shallow-exclude=master https://github.com/django/django.git
> Cloning into 'django'...
> fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly
> $
>
>   it is entirely reproducible, and some googling suggests that this
> represents an error at the *other* end, which in some weird way does
> not support that clone option. that seems strange ... should this
> option work? am i using it incorrectly?
>
>   wait, hang on ... i just picked one of django's topic branches at
> random, and this did succeed:

Yeah i think when you request shallow clone, by default it only gets one branch (see --single-branch, often 'master'). So when you specify --shallow-exclude you essentially say 'give me master branch but exclude everything from master'.

I should probably make it print a friendlier message than simply terminateing like that (it's still a guess, I haven't tried it out)

Show 9 quoted lines

> $ git clone --shallow-exclude=stable/2.0.x https://github.com/django/django.git
> Cloning into 'django'...
> remote: Enumerating objects: 33112, done.
> remote: Counting objects: 100% (33112/33112), done.
> ... etc etc ...
> $
>
> but all this gave me was the master branch. i clearly don't understand
> what this option is supposed to do.

You're saying 'give me master branch, exclude everything that is reachable from stable/2.0.x'. If there's nothing in common between master and this branch, you get full 'master' branch. Otherwise you get a shallow 'master' branch.

This option is meant to give you another way to cut the history. Instead of saying 'give me X latest commits' with --shallow, you could say 'give me commits since this cut point' and the cut point is often a tag, on the same branch. Using an unrelated bracnh or tag could give some surprising result.

-- 
Duy