Re: Resumable git clone?

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 12:41:20AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:
> > If you clone a repository, and the connection drops, the next attempt
> > will have to start from scratch.  This can add significant time and
> > expense if you're on a low-bandwidth or metered connection trying to
> > clone something like Linux.
> 
> For this particular issue, your friendly k.org administrator already
> has a solution.  Torvalds/linux.git is made into a bundle weekly
> with
> 
>     $ git bundle create clone.bundle --all
> 
> and the result placed on k.org CDN.  So low-bandwidth cloners can
> grab it over resumable http, clone from the bundle, and then fill
> the most recent part by fetching from k.org already.
> 
> The tooling to allow this kind of "bundle" (and possibly other forms
> of "CDN offload" material) transparently used by "git clone" was the
> proposal by Shawn Pearce mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

That does help in the case of cloning torvalds/linux.git from
kernel.org, and I'd love to see it used transparently.

However, even with that, I still also see value in a resumable git clone
(or git pull) for many other repositories elsewhere, with a somewhat
lower pull-to-push ratio than kernel.org.  Supporting resumption based
on objects, without the repository needing to generate and keep around a
bundle, seems preferable for such repositories.