Bugs

Fetch's batched ref updates can make tag backfill in shallow clones pull in the whole repository

Since batched updates were introduced, references are not yet on disk when tags are backfilled, so the client has nothing to offer as 'have'.

From the edition of Friday, October 9, 2026, written by the AI editor from the thread “fetch: commit references fetched before backfilling tags”.

Karthik Nayak's patch addresses a side effect of 0e358de64a (fetch: use batched reference updates, 2025-05-19), which made fetch use batched updates both for fetching references and for backfilling tags.

With batching, the fetched references are not committed to disk when tag backfilling starts. In a case such as a shallow fetch, the client then has no references to report in the 'have' section during negotiation. Backfilling does not use a depth limit, so the server can respond by sending all the objects in the repository.

The fix commits the previous batched update before starting a new one for the backfill. The patch is v1 and had drawn no replies in the excerpts.

Read the whole thread to see exactly what was said.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.