Re: Stat cache in .git/index hinders syncing of repositories

Christoph Groth [off-list ref] writes:

However, there is one problem with syncing git repositories, that has
been noticed by multiple people [1]: The file .git/index contains not
only the “git index”, but also a cache of stat-data of the files in the
working directory.  Some file synchronizers are able to sync mtimes, but
syncing ctimes would be bizarre (if it is even possible).

The stat-data in the index file is meant to be a mere optimization,
and after copying .git/index and the working tree files to a new
box, running "git update-index --refresh" would make them in sync,
no?