Marc Branchaud <marcnarc@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > I think things would be more understandable if the option was "--dissociate > <repository>" and was an explicit alternative to --reference: > [[--reference | --dissociate] <repository>] > > I'm still not liking the name "--dissociate" though. The original suggestion > of "--borrow" is better. Perhaps "--library" or "--local-cache"? I dunno... I was not thinking when I originally started the topic with "--borrow", until I realized that it would not make much sense, primarily because we allow multiple references. What should this command line do, and how would you implement such a behaviour? $ git clone \ --reference=/local/pool/linux.git \ --borrow=../my/neighbour/linux-hack.git \ git://git.kernel.org/...../linux.git With "do the usual --reference thing, but then dissociate the result from referents" option, there is no ambiguity and that is why I did not go with the "--borrow" option suggested in the original thread. > So now I'm wondering if the implementation would be more efficient as an > extension of the --local operation. That is, instead of a post-clone repack, > do a --local clone first followed by a simple "git fetch" from the source repo. The network overhead may be comparable to the "--reference" optimization, but if your "clone --local" ends up copying (instead of hard-linking), the initial cost to copy locally would be a pure extra price over "clone --reference and then --dissociate". If the local clone uses hard-linking, it would be cheaper, but it still costs more than dropping an entry into .git/objects/info/alternates, I would imagine. You will pay with your scheme the same cost to run "repack -a -d", which is paid by "--dissociate" at the end of clone, eventually at the first "gc", so there is no efficiency advantage, either. The above is my knee-jerk assessment without any measuring, though. -- 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