Re: [PATCH] clone: Skip pack-*.keep files when cloning locally

Jens Lindstrom [off-list ref] writes:

Hmph.  I am of two minds here.

The pack-*.keep files are temporary, and serve no purpose in the
clone.

They are not temporary, actually.  A user can deliberatey create a
"keep" marker after packing with a good set of parameters, so that
the resulting pack will be kept, instead of letting a later repack
(with faster set of parameters) remove and replace it with less
optimal results.

Worse, though, they are created with access bits 0600, so if the
user trying to clone the repository is different from the user that
caused the pack-*.keep file to be created, the clone will likely
fail due to not being allowed to read (and thus copy) the file in
the first place.

I am perfectly fine with a change that allows a local clone to skip
and not error out when such a "keep" marker cannot be copied, I do
not know if it is a good idea to unconditionally skip and not even
attempt to copy it.