Re: git clone out of memory. alternatives?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Mar 28, 2008, 03:04 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0803272001120.14670@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <beb5fde90803271929u40a98915ifd05234476ab92f9@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008, Jeffrey Chang wrote:

> 
> Is there any way to get around this problem?  For example:
> - Can I run git clone in a way that uses less memory, such as cloning
> a piece of the repository at a time?

Cloning really is pretty memory-intensive, because it involves going through every single object.

What you *can* do is to limit cloning to the rsync protocol, which is strictly quite horrible (none of the inherent sanity-checks of the native protocol), but it avoids the server-side costs.

However, you'll eventually hit other problems, like the fact that you also won't be able to do a full repack on the server side (because a full repack does the same thing).

> - Can I export the entire repository as a file that can be loaded on
> my target machine, like "svnadmin dump" for subversion?

That's essentially what a repack does. See above about the problem.

> - Can I just rsync the repository from another computer that already has a copy?

Yes. You can. And you can also repack on another host and then rsync the results back to the server. It's not pretty, but it should work.

		Linus