Re: [PATCH/RFC 0/3] --seed as an alias for --dissociate --reference

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 10:01:49PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

  1. Assuming that "seed" is a reasonable verb for this concept, is
     "--seed=<repo>" OK for the option?  Would "--seed-from=<repo>" be
     better? (Also, the response "bleh, seed is a terrible name" is
     fine, too, but only if accompanied by your own suggestion :) ).

The seed may not even have to be a repository.  A bundle file hosted
on CDN that is reachable via (resumable) wget would be another good
way to prime the well, and it would fit with the above framework
nicely.  Grab it, fetch from it into a temporary hierarchy and then
run "fetch --prune" against the repository you originally wanted to
clone from.

Yeah, I was just looking over the list archives for the past few months,
for things I had marked as "to read and think about later"[1]. That's
how I recalled our prior discussion on --dissociate.

Anyway, I happened upon the "prime the clone from a bundle" concept
being discussed again recently, and had the same thought. We already
treat local bundles as a possible source for fetching/cloning. Once upon
a time I had some patches that would let you clone straight from a
bundle over http (it just spooled to disk, which is not the _most_
efficient way to do it, but trying to massage the bundle straight into a
packfile[2] ends up every complex very quickly). I should resurrect those
patches.

-Peff

[1] My "think about later" mailbox has ~5000 messages in it, some of
    which are from 2010. I think I may need to just declare bankruptcy.

[2] There's that word again.