On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Andrew Keller <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am considering developing a new feature, and I'd like to poll the group for
> opinions.
>
> Background: A couple years ago, I wrote a set of scripts that speed up
> cloning of frequently used repositories. The scripts utilize a bare Git
> repository located at a known location, and automate providing a --reference
> parameter to `git clone` and `git submodule update`. Recently, some
> coworkers of mine expressed an interest in using the scripts, so I published
> the current version of my scripts, called `git repocache`, described at the
> bottom of <https://github.com/andrewkeller/ak-git-tools>.
>
> Slowly, it has occurred to me that this feature, or something similar to it,
> may be worth adding to Git, so I've been thinking about the best approach.
> Here's my best idea so far:
>
> 1) Introduce '--borrow' to `git-fetch`. This would behave similarly to
> '--reference', except that it operates on a temporary basis, and does not
> assume that the reference repository will exist after the operation
> completes, so any used objects are copied into the local objects database.
> In theory, this mechanism would be distinct from '--reference', so if both
> are used, some objects would be copied, and some objects would be accessible
> via a reference repository referenced by the alternates file.
Interesting. I do something similar on my CI Server to reduce
workload on Gerrit. Having a built-in to support submodules would be
nice. Currently my script does this:
MIRROR=/path/to/local/mirror
NEW=ssh://gerrit-server
git clone ${MIRROR}/project && cd project
#-- Init/update submodules from our local mirror if possible
git submodule update --recursive --init
#-- Switch to the remote server URL
git config remote.origin.url $(git config remote.origin.url|sed -e
"s|^${MIRROR}|${NEW}|")
git submodule sync #--recursive ; recursive not supported :-[
#-- Checkout remote updates
git pull --ff-only --recurse-submodules origin ${BRANCH}
git submodule update --recursive --init
Is that about the same as you are aiming for?
> 2) Teach `git fetch` to read 'repocache.path' (or a better-named
> configuration), and use it to automatically activate borrowing.
Seems like this could be trouble if a local repo is coincidentally
named the same as some unrelated repo you want to clone. But I can
see the value.
What about something similar to url.insteadOf? Maybe
'url.${SERVER}.autoBorrow = ${MIRROR}', with replacement semantics
similar to insteadOf.
> 3) For consistency, `git clone`, `git pull`, and `git submodule update`
> should probably all learn '--borrow', and forward it to `git fetch`.
>
> 4) In some scenarios, it may be necessary to temporarily not automatically
> borrow, so `git fetch`, and everything that calls it may need an argument to
> do that.
--no-borrow
Phil
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