Re: [GSoC][PATCH v4 2/7] clone: better handle symlinked files at .git/objects/

>
> On 03/22, Matheus Tavares wrote:
> > There is currently an odd behaviour when locally clonning a repository
> > with symlinks at .git/objects: using --no-hardlinks all symlinks are
> > dereferenced but without it Git will try to hardlink the files with the
> > link() function, which has an OS-specific behaviour on symlinks. On OSX
> > and NetBSD, it creates a hardlink to the file pointed by the symlink
> > whilst on GNU/Linux, it creates a hardlink to the symlink itself.
> >
> > On Manjaro GNU/Linux:
> >     $ touch a
> >     $ ln -s a b
> >     $ link b c
> >     $ ls -li a b c
> >     155 [...] a
> >     156 [...] b -> a
> >     156 [...] c -> a
> >
> > But on NetBSD:
> >     $ ls -li a b c
> >     2609160 [...] a
> >     2609164 [...] b -> a
> >     2609160 [...] c
> >
> > It's not good to have the result of a local clone to be OS-dependent and
> > since the behaviour on GNU/Linux may result in broken symlinks, let's
> > re-implement it with linkat() instead of link() using a flag to always
> > follow symlinks and make the hardlink be to the pointed file. With this,
> > besides standardizing the behaviour, no broken symlinks will be
> > produced. Also, add tests for symlinked files at .git/objects/.
> >
> > Note: Git won't create symlinks at .git/objects itself, but it's better
> > to handle this case and be friendly with users who manually create them.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Matheus Tavares <matheus.bernardino@usp.br>
> > Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
> > Co-authored-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
> > ---
> >  builtin/clone.c            |  2 +-
> >  t/t5604-clone-reference.sh | 26 +++++++++++++++++++-------
> >  2 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/builtin/clone.c b/builtin/clone.c
> > index 50bde99618..b76f33c635 100644
> > --- a/builtin/clone.c
> > +++ b/builtin/clone.c
> > @@ -443,7 +443,7 @@ static void copy_or_link_directory(struct strbuf *src, struct strbuf *dest,
> >               if (unlink(dest->buf) && errno != ENOENT)
> >                       die_errno(_("failed to unlink '%s'"), dest->buf);
> >               if (!option_no_hardlinks) {
> > -                     if (!link(src->buf, dest->buf))
> > +                     if (!linkat(AT_FDCWD, src->buf, AT_FDCWD, dest->buf, AT_SYMLINK_FOLLOW))
>
> This line is starting to get a bit long, might be worth breaking it up
> to keep to 80 characters per line.
>
> I notice that we are currently not using 'linkat()' anywhere else in
> our codebase.  It looks like it has been introduced in POSIX.1-2008,
> which sounds fairly recent by git's standards.  So I wonder if this is
> really supported on all platforms that git is being built on.
>
> I also wonder what would need to be done on Windows if we were to
> introduce this.  I see we define the 'link()' function in
> 'compat/mingw.c' for that currently, so I guess something similar
> would be needed for 'linkat()'.  I added Dscho to Cc for Windows
> expertise.

> While I agree with the goal of consistency accross all platforms here,
> I don't know if it's actually worth going through the pain of doing
> that, especially for somewhat of an edge case in local clones.
>
> If the test in the previous patch passes on all platforms, I'd be okay
> with just calling the behaviour here undefined, especially as git
> would never actually create symlinks in the .git/objects directory.