Hi there,
I have been trying to use the --reference option to clone a big
repository using a local copy, but I can't manage to make it work using
sub-module update. I believe this is a bug, unless I missed something.
I am on Windows, Git 2.12.0
So the problem is as follow:
- I have got a repository with multiple sub-modules, say
main
lib1
sub-module1.git
lib2
sub-module2.git
- The original repositories are in GitHub, which makes it slow
- I have done a normal git clone of the entire repository (not bare) and
put it on a file server, say \\fileserver\ref_repo\
(Note that the problem also happens with local copy)
So if I do a clone to get the repo and all the submodules with...
git clone --reference-if-able \\fileserver\ref-repo --recursive
git@xxxxxxxxxx:company/main
...then it all works, all the sub-modules get cloned and the it's fast.
Now in my case I am working with Jenkins jobs and I need to first do a
clone, and then get the sub-modules, but if I do...
git clone --reference-if-able \\fileserver\ref-repo
git@xxxxxxxxxx:company/main (so non-recursive)
cd main
git submodule update --init --reference \\fileserver\ref-repo
... then this takes ages, as it would normally do without the use of
--reference. I suspect it's not actually using it.
The git clone documentation mentions that the reference is then passed
to the sub-module clone commands, so I would expect "git clone
--recursive" to work the same as "git submodule update", as far as
--reference is concerned.
I noticed for a single module, doing a...
git submodule update --init --reference
\\fileserver\ref-repo\lib1\sub-module1 -- lib1/sub-module1
...i.e. adding the sub-module path to the reference path, works. Which
kind of make sense but then how do you do to apply it to all the
sub-modules? (without writing a script to do that)
If someone can confirm the problem or explain me what I am dong wrong
that would be great.
Maxime