Am 12.04.24 um 15:05 schrieb L. E. Segovia: > Under a MSYS2 shell, follow these steps (feel free to replace the choice > of remote repo with any other supporting a Rust crate): > > 1. `cd` to a directory of your choice (let's call it `dirA`). > 2. `git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/librsvg.git .` > 3. `git checkout -b cerbero_build`. > 4. `cd ..` > 5. `git clone <full path to dirA> -s -b cerbero_build dirB` > 6. `cd dirB` > 7. `git status` > > Now switch to any other shell of your choice, such as Git Bash, CMD, or > PowerShell, and try issuing commands such as `git status`. It will > result in a wall of "error: unable to normalize..." Thanks, that is much more helpful. Here are my assumption, my explanation of the symptoms, and the conclusion (which is basically "if it hurts, don't do it"): I assume that you have two installations of Git. One installation is used when you use the git command from the MSYS2 shell; it is the MSYS2 version. The other installation is Git for Windows or equivalent that is used by all the other shells. When you clone a repository with -s, a .git/objects/info/alternates file is initialized that contains the path to the original repository. You can see its contents with `git count-objects -v`. I tested the reproduction recipe with my own build (which is a MinGW build, much like Git for Windows), and it looks like this: C:\Temp\repoclone>git count-objects -v count: 0 size: 0 in-pack: 0 packs: 0 size-pack: 0 prune-packable: 0 garbage: 0 size-garbage: 0 alternate: C:/Temp/repoorig/.git/objects See the last line? It begins with a drive letter. When you call the command with the MSYS2 version, it will look more like this: alternate: /c/Temp/repoorig/.git/objects This is the MSYS2/Cygwin absolute path with a "drive letter". Unfortunately, this kind of path is unintelligible for Git for Windows. It expects absolute paths to begin with drive letter-colon or a double-slash or double-backslash. For this reason, it reports "unable to normalize alternate object path". The conclusion is: Do not use two different flavors of Git on a repository that is set up with a link to an alternate repository. BTW, I did not do the followup test with `git am`. (Actually, I did, but there were no errors.) So, I cannot tell why your MSYS2 version suddenly also reports the "unable to normalize" error. -- Hannes
