Re: Does cloning a shallow repo require special setting in the cloned one?

Roy Lee [off-list ref] writes:

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 08:34:51AM +0200, Teemu Likonen wrote:

quoted

On 2009-02-25 19:49 (-0800), roylee17 wrote:

quoted

$ git clone --depth 1 git-full git-shallow2
'git log' still gives a full history

Why can't I clone a shallow repo from the git-full?
Does it requires some settings in the git-full repo?

I don't know the "why" part but using file:// URL should work:

    git clone --depth 1 file:///path/to/git-full git-shallow2

I don't think the behavior is intentional, but a side effect of the
fact that git takes some shortcuts when cloning locally. In particular,
it will try to copy or hardlink the object database rather than
transmitting over the git protocol locally. Using file:// has always
been the way to suppress that shortcut.

Perhaps to avoid surprise, that optimization should be turned off for
options which cause it to behave differently (like --depth). But I have
to wonder what the point of --depth is locally; if you are worried about
space, hardlinks (the default) or alternates ("clone -s") are a better
solution.

Actully, the original intention was to find a quick way to checkout and
build several projects regularly. The first thing came to me was cloning
shallow repos for saving some time. So I tried it with my local repo first.

Later, one of my co-works suggested me to try git archive, and that did
reallly fit my needs.

Perhaps you would be interested then in contrib/workdir/git-new-workdir
script then, which allows for multiple checked out copies from a single
repository?  Be aware that if you work in those copies, and are not
careful, it can lead to confusion; but if all but one of checkouts are
read only it could be the best solution.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git