Re: Current state of GIT fetch/pull clients

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 16:52:20 -0700, 
Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

What this means is that using objects/info/alternates mechanism
in your repository is a bit premature as things currently stand,
if you intend your repository to be used by the general public.

Clients using rsync can use a workaround, although it is a bit clumsy.
I do rsync for selected /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ trees, including
torvalds and aegl.  At one point Tony Luck (aegl) was using alternates,
with objects/info/alternates containing
/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git/objects

As you described in your mail, rsync with alternates overwrites the
local file, so the local alternates ended up pointing at a local
directory that did not exist.  Creating a local symlink from
/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git to the local directory that contains the
torvalds and aegl directories worked around the problem.  git checkout
on the aegl tree was quite happy to follow the symlink and pick up most
of the files from torvalds.

No point in doing that now, Tony has reverted the aegl tree to a full
copy of Linus, instead of using alternates.