Re: Git'ing a non-labeled set of sources

[Jan Hudec <bulb@ucw.cz>]

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On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 13:59:38 -0500, Sparks, Sam wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> Please excuse me if this is an ignorant question; I'm new to git and my
> have overlooked something in the documentation.
> 
> I'm attempting to obtain a snapshot of source code from an unlabeled git
> branch in a public repository. I've found in the documentation that a
> timestamp cannot be used to specify a particular version of source code,
> but I believe I can work with the commit value as returned by 'git
> show'.

Clone and pull, over git protocol, only ask the server for objects referenced
by any refs -- plus all objects those depend on. Which does not necessarily
mean all commits, because references may be removed.

If a branch (ie. ref in refs/heads) is removed or rewound (moved to point to
commit that is not descendant of what it pointed to before), some commits may
become dangling. Clone and pull won't know such commits exist and therefore
won't be able to ask server to provide them.

> However, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to use this identifier
> to clone or checkout the associated source tree. Has anyone been
> successful in using git to successfully replicate an unlabeled version
> of sources in a repository?
> 
> Here is my latest attempt:
> /dir_i_want_to_replicate $ git show --pretty=short
> commit 5b1313fb2758ffce8b624457f777d8cc6709608d
> Author: ....

I bet that if you do 'git lost-found' here, it will find something and this
commit will be among the finds, or predecessor of one of them.

> /replication_dir $ git clone git://www.denx.de/git/u-boot.git
> u-boot-mpc83xx
> Blah blah blah..
>  100% (4378/4378) done
> /replication_dir/u-boot-mpc83xx/ $ git checkout
> 5b1313fb2758ffce8b624457f777d8cc6709608d
> error: pathspec '5b1313fb2758ffce8b624457f777d8cc6709608d' did not match
> any. 

It seems that git pull only accepts refs as arguments. So you'll have to
create a branch at that commit in the origin to get it over to destination.

-- 
						 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb@ucw.cz>

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