On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 06:28:43PM +0100, Jan Holesovsky wrote: > Hi, > > This is my attempt to implement the 'lazy clone' I've read about a bit in the > git mailing list archive, but did not see implemented anywhere - the clone > that fetches a minimal amount of data with the possibility to download the > rest later (transparently!) when necessary. I am sorry to send it as a huge > patch, not as a series of patches, but as I don't know if I chose a way that is > acceptable for you [I'm new to the git code ;-)], I'd like to hear some > feedback first, and then I'll split it into smaller pieces for easier > integration - if OK. > > Background: > > Currently we are evaluating the usage of git for OpenOffice.org as one of the > candidates (SVN is the other one), see > > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/SCM_Migration > > I've provided a git import of OOo with the entire history; the problem is that > the pack has 2.5G, so it's not too convenient to download for casual > developers that just want to try it. Shallow clone is not a possibility - we > don't get patches through mailing lists, so we need the pull/push, and also > thanks to the OOo development cycle, we have too many living heads which > causes the shallow clone to download about 1.5G even with --depth 1. Lazy > clone sounded like the right idea to me. With this proof-of-concept > implementation, just about 550M from the 2.5G is downloaded, which is still > about twice as much in comparison with downloading a tarball, but bearable. <snip> There are 2 things, here: - Probably, you can make your pack smaller with proper window sizing. Try taking a look at the "Git and GCC" that crossed borders between the gcc and the git mailing lists. - There are tricks to do roughly what you want without modifying git. For example, you can prepare several "shared" clones of your repo (git clone -s) and leave in each only a few branches. Cloning from these will only pull the needed data. Mike - 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
