git bundle unbundle and "check-outable" refs

Never having needed git bundle before, I've recently been using it as a sneakernet. In particular, I'm using bundles to work around limitations of filesystem semantics on vfat and hpfs+ drives when shared between Linux and OS X systems. The systems are air-gapped, so sneakernet is essential.

At any rate, the issue I'm dealing with is that "git bundle unbundle" is sort of non-intuitive to deal with. It seems to add the commits directly to the local repository, but doesn't give me any of the branch refs that I'm expecting from such an operation. In other words, if I bundle branch foo on machine A, then unbundle on machine B, I expect to be able to "git checkout foo" and get on with life.

Instead, it seems that I have to figure out what commits were unbundled, and create a new branch ref pointing to the head that I want. I assume this is to prevent namespace collisions, but it seems really, really cumbersome. Wouldn't it make more sense to include branch names in the bundle, and simply prompt the user to rename refs that conflict?

I'm certainly open to other ideas of how to accomplish this workflow, and if there's an invocation to simplify this that I'm unaware of, please advise. Otherwise, I really think the default behavior of the unbundle sub-command ought to be more intuitive.

"Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam+listmail@codegnome.org> writes:

$ git bundle -h
usage: git bundle create <file> <git-rev-list args>
   or: git bundle verify <file>
   or: git bundle list-heads <file> [<refname>...]
   or: git bundle unbundle <file> [<refname>...]

$ git bundle list-heads /var/tmp/junk/foo.bundle 632052641517de1a965c1f045b97d2eaa541b2e9 refs/heads/maint

$ git fetch /var/tmp/junk/foo.bundle maint
From /var/tmp/junk/foo.bundle
 * branch            maint      -> FETCH_HEAD

or

$ git fetch /var/tmp/junk/foo.bundle maint:bundle_head $ git log bundle_head

"Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam+listmail@codegnome.org> writes:

I guess the fault is with "git bundle" documentation.

The "Example" section of git-bundle(1) manpage shows that you can use path to bundle in place of URL to repository in "git clone". Actually you can use path to bundle anywhere where URL or nickname of repository is/can be used, i.e.:

  git remote add <name> <bundle>
  git fetch <bundle> [<refspec>...]
  git pull <bundle>  [<refspec>...]

  git ls-remote <bundle>

HTH