Hi Eddy, > I suspect that in the tests, because the "server side" repos are > local, the git fetch-by-sha1/cloning by hash will be done correctly, > without the need of a branch hint, but the problem will still exist > for servers such as github which do not support fetch-by-sha1. > In case I realize that a server-side repo that doesn't support > fetch-by-sha1 is needed, is there a mechanism to set that up in the > test case, or do I have to rethink my approach? You can force a clone (at least, not sure about fetch) to use the git protocol by --no-local, and then you can set uploadpack.{allowTipSHA1InWant, allowReachableSHA1InWant, allowAnySHA1InWant} as neded by the test. >From the fetch man page: For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following syntaxes may be used: · /path/to/repo.git/ · file:///path/to/repo.git/ These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except when cloning, when the former implies --local option. Thanks, Stefan