Re: .gitlink for Summer of Code

Matthieu Moy [off-list ref] wrote:

Eric Lesh [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

.gitlink is for a lightweight checkout of a branch into a separate
directory on the local filesystem.

I think it's a pitty to restrict yourself to _local_ filesystem. There
are tons of cases where you have a fast, non-NFS, access to a machine
and would like to host your repository there.

That said, I suppose removing this restriction moves the solution from
the category "quick and efficient hack" to something much harder.

Yes.  But there's another project on the ideas list that addresses
that (``Lazy Clone'').  It is quite a bit more difficult than the
.gitlink idea as the implementation requires a network protocol
client implemented somewhere near the read_sha1_file interface.

Junio and I had talked about this (I think it was on the list,
but maybe it was on #git) recently and considered maybe trying to
do it as a wrapper *above* read_sha1_file/has_sha1_file, and adjust
the clients that call them to invoke the wrapper instead.

Nothing will obviously beat having the file on a local disk; but if
you have a fast LAN it may be hard to beat an anonymous TCP socket
dedicated to serving Git objects.  Such a socket may even beat out
NFS...  ;-)
 

quoted

A .gitlink'ed checkout has its own index+HEAD, but otherwise refers
back to the main repository for objects, refs, etc.

Stupid question: why .gitlink, and not .git/link or so? This file is
not versionned, I don't think it should be in the working tree.

I've thought the same thing.

Actually, I'd almost say put it into .git/config, e.g.:

	mkdir .git
	cat >.git/config <<EOF
	[core]
		repositoryversion = 0
		filemode = true
		link = /path/to/source
	EOF

as then the index and HEAD file can both be stored in .git, just
like with the non-gitlink case.

-- 
Shawn.