On Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 10:47:40AM +0000, Sebastian Tennant wrote: > Here are the actions I'm taking to configure the mirror: > > $ git clone --bare https://url.of/project.git > $ cd project.git > $ git remote rename origin upstream > $ git config remote.upstream.fetch\ > '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/upstream/*' > $ git fetch upstream --prune > > At this point there are no refs under refs/heads (and very many under > refs/remotes/upstream). You'd have refs under refs/heads at this point. They were created when you did the original bare clone (since bare clones fetch all heads to start with, though they don't set up a refspec). And they won't be deleted by the pruning fetch, of course, because you configured the refspec to limit itself to refs/remotes/upstream on the local side. If you don't want them (and I think you don't), you can just initialize the repository directly, and then fetch, like: git init --bare project.git cd project.git git config remote.upstream.url https://url.of/project.git [and then configure refspec and fetch --prune as before] > Here are the actions I'm then taking on a client: > > $ git clone --bare mirror:path/to/project.git > $ cd project.git > $ git remote rename origin mirror > $ git config remote.mirror.fetch\ > '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/mirror/*' This bare clone will do the same thing. So you'll end up with a copy of all of the heads created in the earlier step. Worse, they won't be the current state of those branches, but stale ones left from when you created the mirror repo. I think you want _two_ refspecs in the clients: - one to fetch the client-local branches stored on the mirror. That is: +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* and those branches just appear as normal. - one to fetch the mirrored upstream branches from the special namespace on the mirror. That one is: +refs/remotes/upstream/*:refs/remotes/upstream/* > At this point, both mirror and client have a normal fetch refspec, > i.e. no additional refspec has been added to the client, yet when I > run: > > $ git fetch mirror --prune > > on the client, all the refs on mirror under refs/remotes/upstream are > fetched and placed under refs/remotes/mirror on the client. The refspec you showed above for the client is fetching from refs/heads/* on the remote side. So it will never look at refs/remotes/upstream from the mirror. > My understanding of refspec: > > +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/mirror/* > > is "fetch only those refs under refs/heads and place them under > refs/remotes/mirror", which in this case should mean that no refs are > fetched (since there are none on mirror under refs/heads). Your understanding is right, but the gotcha of how "clone --bare" works is making things more confusing. > What's going on here that I'm just not getting? > > If I add the additional refspec to the client: > > $ git config --add remote.mirror.fetch\ > '+refs/remotes/upstream/*:refs/remotes/upstream/*' > > and fetch once more, I end up with all the refs already under > refs/remotes/mirror duplicated under refs/remotes/upstream. Right. Those are the copies you actually _want_ to have. The ones pulled from refs/heads/* aren't. You'd expect that to be empty to start, and then eventually it would be populated by pushes from local clients. -Peff
