# git clone -l 4 messages from 2008-03-05 to 2008-03-05. Participants: Daniel Barkalow, Junio C Hamano, Brandon Casey. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/12508 ## Daniel Barkalow, 2008-03-05 00:03 Subject: git clone -l Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LNX.1.00.0803041900080.19665%40iabervon.org ``` What, exactly, is -l supposed to do for clone? As far as I can tell, we automatically do the local magic if we can. Would it be okay to make "local" default to "if possible", have "-l" mean error if not possible, and have "--no-local" able to avoid using local magic even if we could use it? -Daniel *This .sig left intentionally blank* ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2008-03-05 00:32 Subject: Re: git clone -l Message-ID: <7vd4qa3t9t.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vd4qa3t9t.fsf%40gitster.siamese.dyndns.org In-Reply-To: ``` Daniel Barkalow writes: > What, exactly, is -l supposed to do for clone? As far as I can tell, we > automatically do the local magic if we can. Would it be okay to make > "local" default to "if possible", have "-l" mean error if not possible, > and have "--no-local" able to avoid using local magic even if we could use > it? It used to be that "-l" meant "When it is local, use hardlink if possible otherwise copy without complaining, as either are cheaper than the pack piped to unpack." Lack of -l meant no local magic. Recently lack of -l stopped to mean "no local magic". We still do the local magic, but we do not do hardlinks and instead do copies. An "-l" that asks clone across filesystems still falls back to copying but now gets a warning. "--no-hardlinks" does not have any significance anymore, as that is what you would get for a local clone without -l. The way to refuse local magic is to use file://$path/ explicitly; we do not have --no-local. ``` ## Daniel Barkalow, 2008-03-05 00:45 Subject: Re: git clone -l Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LNX.1.00.0803041937110.19665%40iabervon.org In-Reply-To: <7vd4qa3t9t.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> ``` On Tue, 4 Mar 2008, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Daniel Barkalow writes: > > > What, exactly, is -l supposed to do for clone? As far as I can tell, we > > automatically do the local magic if we can. Would it be okay to make > > "local" default to "if possible", have "-l" mean error if not possible, > > and have "--no-local" able to avoid using local magic even if we could use > > it? > > It used to be that "-l" meant "When it is local, use hardlink if possible > otherwise copy without complaining, as either are cheaper than the pack > piped to unpack." Lack of -l meant no local magic. > > Recently lack of -l stopped to mean "no local magic". We still do the > local magic, but we do not do hardlinks and instead do copies. An "-l" > that asks clone across filesystems still falls back to copying but now > gets a warning. "--no-hardlinks" does not have any significance anymore, > as that is what you would get for a local clone without -l. > > The way to refuse local magic is to use file://$path/ explicitly; we do > not have --no-local. Ah, okay. I was having a hard time getting the not-using-local-magic case to be clearly not using local magic, but I think that was confusion on my part. Also, it looks like we need a test that not using -l is equivalent to --no-hardlinks. Would it be okay to additionally block local magic, even with a local path, if "--no-local" is used? Using our parse-options code means --no-local is accepted anyway, and it's a bit confusing that it doesn't block default local magic. (Obviously, this won't break anything, since old code wouldn't have accepted it.) -Daniel *This .sig left intentionally blank* ``` ## Brandon Casey, 2008-03-05 00:53 Subject: Re: git clone -l Message-ID: <47CDEF11.8000807@nrlssc.navy.mil> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/47CDEF11.8000807%40nrlssc.navy.mil In-Reply-To: <7vd4qa3t9t.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> ``` Junio C Hamano wrote: > Daniel Barkalow writes: > >> What, exactly, is -l supposed to do for clone? As far as I can tell, we >> automatically do the local magic if we can. Would it be okay to make >> "local" default to "if possible", have "-l" mean error if not possible, >> and have "--no-local" able to avoid using local magic even if we could use >> it? > > It used to be that "-l" meant "When it is local, use hardlink if possible > otherwise copy without complaining, as either are cheaper than the pack > piped to unpack." Lack of -l meant no local magic. > > Recently lack of -l stopped to mean "no local magic". We still do the > local magic, but we do not do hardlinks and instead do copies. An "-l" > that asks clone across filesystems still falls back to copying but now > gets a warning. "--no-hardlinks" does not have any significance anymore, > as that is what you would get for a local clone without -l. Are you sure? I thought this was changed by 3d5c418f so that hardlinking is done by default. Lack of -l means "do local magic and use hard links". Using -l makes git-clone print a warning when hard linking fails. --no-hardlinks disables hard linking and still does local magic. -brandon ```