Hi brian, On Wed, 20 Oct 2021, brian m. carlson wrote: > Users very commonly want to sync their working tree across machines, I was confused at first, because I do sync my working trees frequently. I do this via `git push` and `git pull`, though. Maybe clarify that you mean rsync, or sync services like DropBox and OneDrive? I see that you mention "cloud syncing service" below, but I believe that it might be better to lead with the examples. > often to carry across in-progress work or stashes. Despite this not > being a recommended approach, users want to do it and are not dissuaded > by suggestions not to, so let's recommend a sensible technique. > > The technique that many users are using is their preferred cloud syncing > service, which is a bad idea. Users have reported problems where they > end up with duplicate files that won't go away (with names like "file.c > 2"), broken references, oddly named references that have date stamps > appended to them, missing objects, and general corruption and data loss. > That's because almost all of these tools sync file by file, which is a > great technique if your project is a single word processing document or > spreadsheet, but is utterly abysmal for Git repositories because they > don't necessarily snapshot the entire repository correctly. They also > tend to sync the files immediately instead of when the repository is > quiescent, so writing multiple files, as occurs during a commit or a gc, > can confuse the tools and lead to corruption. > > We know that the old standby, rsync, is up to the task, provided that > the repository is quiescent, so let's suggest that and dissuade people > from using cloud syncing tools. Let's tell people about common things > they should be aware of before doing this and that this is still > potentially risky. Additionally, let's tell people that Git's security > model does not permit sharing working trees across users in case they > planned to do that. While we'd still prefer users didn't try to do > this, hopefully this will lead them in a safer direction. The remainder of the commit message is very clear. Thank you, Dscho
