git stash destroys hard links

I dont know if this is even fixable, but I wanted to at least mention it. Performing a git stash will destroy any hard links and replace them with simply a copy of the file.

$ mkdir test $ cd test $ git init $ touch foobar.sh $ git add -A $ git commit -m 'first commit'

$ ln foobar.sh foobar-link.sh

$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 2 Steven None 0 May 21 23:18 foobar.sh -rw-r--r-- 2 Steven None 0 May 21 23:18 foobar-link.sh

$ git stash -u $ git stash pop

$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 Steven None 0 May 21 23:18 foobar.sh -rw-r--r-- 1 Steven None 0 May 21 23:18 foobar-link.sh

Steven Penny <svnpenn@gmail.com> writes:

I do not think there is anything specific to stash. Whenever we write out results of an operation to a file in the working tree, we first unlink(2) and then creat(2), which essentially breaks hardlinked files and avoids updating some _other_ paths that share the underlying file with the updated path.

appear that git commits hard links, it just collapses them into separate regular files (presumably to avoid changes in one place mucking things up elsewhere without git knowing about it). I don't think it makes much sense to stash hardlinks if the policy is to forget them in commits. Thanks Angus