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

Jens Lindström [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I am not sure if we should care that deeply about them in the first
place.

Fine by me; I don't really have a strong opinion on the matter.

quoted

Besides, I think you can make a hardlink to a file that you cannot
read.

Not always.  The Linux kernel can at least be configured not to allow
it.  It seems this is enabled by default in at least Debian.

You learn a new thing every day, I guess.  I am on Debian, I do not
think I did any customization in that area, and I can hardlink just
fine.

This restriction had me a bit confused when I was testing variations
here; I expected all "access denied" failures to be because of .keep
files, but in fact creating hardlinks to other files (.idx and .pack)
failed too, even though they were readable.  

Is it possible that you are tripping cross-device link?  The reason
why we have "attempt to hardlink but fall back to copy" is exactly
because it is fairly common that people try local-cheap clone without
realizing the source and the destination may be on separate filesystems.