I'm trying to share pre-built working trees using NFS-server-side volume cloning (not "git clone"). This makes a new volume that shares all the data with the source volume, including build products that would otherwise take hours to regenerate. While the data is identical, much of the inode information changes: uid, gid, ino, dev, mtime, ctime. What is the best way to rewrite .git/index in the clone? Options that work but are slow: git reset --hard HEAD write all files, breaking data sharing, 2 min 45 sec git update-index --refresh stat and read all files, 5 min 55 sec I hacked out the file data comparison in ce_modified_check_fs() to measure: HACKED git update-index --refresh Just the stat, 13 sec The lstat() is required to look up the new inode number. The rest of the clone operation takes around 3 min, so I'd like to avoid this additional 5+ min of read()s if possible. Is there a way to do so using existing commands? Should I add a new option to update-index, or maybe write a stand-alone tool to manipulate the index file directly? Thanks, -- Pete P.S. The user-observable problem that occurs if I do not rebuild the index is, e.g.: $ git cherry-pick build/top error: Your local changes to 'file.h' would be overwritten by merge. Aborting. Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html