Re: git clone -l

Daniel Barkalow [off-list ref] 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.