Re: Large git repositories

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:32:25AM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:
>> > It looks like:
>> >    --depth=1 --single-branch
>> > could be useful parameters for "git clone".
>> Yes, that’s what came to mind.
>> If it happens to be useful, we could extend ‘git-reference’ with a list
>> of extra parameters to pass to ‘git’.
>
> Actually, I have something else in mind. Currently, we accept commit hashes
> or branch/tag names.

It’s already possible, in the ‘commit’ field, to use anything that ‘git
checkout’ would accept, which includes a commit hash, a tag, or a branch
name.

> How about adding an additional parameter "branch?"  (in various
> places, when I looked at the code I think I understood where and would
> be willing to propose a patch)? If it is set, we can directly specify
> the branch/tag at clone, without the need for an additional checkout,
> and could also pass the parameters "--depth=1 --single-branch".
>
> Alternatively, we could also automatically distinguish commit hashes from
> branch/tag names, for instance, by imposing that always the long commit hash
> is used and assuming that a branch/tag name never equals a hexidecimal string
> of the corresponding length. But I prefer the additional parameter.

I see, that makes sense.

> In our case, we could then git clone the 1.5 GB once and for all and delete
> everything outside data/fonts (and in particular the huge .git). The result
> would be the source for a variety of android fonts (maybe to be placed into
> font-android.scm or the like).
>
> What do you think?

Those changes you propose would be fine, but still, it’s extra
complexity and I’m worried that it would be used essentially in a just
one place.  Is there really no other way to get these fonts?

Thanks,
Ludo’.