Re: GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Apr 18, 2006, 18:47 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0604181139150.3701@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20060418182650.GB25688@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de>

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Jörn Engel wrote:

> 
> But it appears as if I could "cp -lr" the git tree and work with that.

That should work. I just personally fear cowlinks, because some things will edit the files in place, and then you're screwed.

I _think_ it should be ok for the .git subdirectory, but quite frankly, I'm not going to guarantee it. Also, you will break the cow-linking when you ever re-pack either the source or the destination, so you'd actually be _better_ off with something that does

	# clone the git directories by hand, no checkout (-n).
	git clone -l -s -n src dst

	# cow-link the checked-out state
	(cd src ; git ls-files | cpio -pudml dst)

	# make sure to refresh the index
	git update-index --refresh

or something like that.

TOTALLY UNTESTED!! (And you need to have made "dst" be an absolute path, of course, since we want it to work even after we've done the "cd src" thing).

		Linus