"Ian Dees" <undees@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Hi, all. Upon cloning a repository, the initial message reads: > > Initialized empty Git repository in path/to/new-repo/.git > 0 blocks > > I'd wager "empty" means, "empty because Git is about to populate it." > Even so, this wording could be a bit surprising to new adopters, > especially coupled with the "0 blocks" suffix (is it really creating > hardlinks on NTFS?). The impression is that the clone didn't work. > The impression is, of course, eventually dispelled by looking inside > the new directory. Is there a way to clarify the overall status of > the clone operation? This is caused by the fact that for now git-clone is a shell script, which creates empty repository using git-init (The "Initialized..." message is from git-init), then configures it and populates it. For local clones it uses cpio for hardlinking: the "0 blocks" is from cpio. It shouldn't be hard to add message which would confirm successful completion of the clone if it is local clone; the messages from git-fetch are I think enough indication that clone succeeded... but perhaps we would want to add final message anyway. Nevertheless git-clone waits to be rewritten in C anyway, so there is no much initiative to improve shell version. The stumbling blocks are as far as I can remember moving detection of which branch is currently checked out to git-remote, and optionally adding symbolic-ref extension to git transfer protocol for git to not have to guess which branch is HEAD. > One other minor thing I noticed while futzing with clones: if you try > to clone an empty repository, you get the same "Initialized empty > repository" message, even though no such second directory is created. > I'm not suggesting Git should suddenly start allowing empty cloning, > but perhaps a "Empty repository; skipping clone" message would be > helpful. $ git clone a b Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/b/.git/ fatal: cannot clone empty repository $ git --version git version 1.5.4 Perhaps git should check if there is anything to clone _before_ git-init, or do not remove empty directory after failing to fetch. -- Jakub Narebski Poland ShadeHawk on #git - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
