To graft or not to graft... (Re: Recovering from repository corruption)

["Stephen R. van den Berg" <srb@cuci.nl>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>more corruption by hiding things (ie if you clone a repo with a grafts 
>file, the result will now have neither the grafts file _nor_ the state 
>that was hidden by it, so the result is guaranteed to be corrupt).

This is kind of confusing.
As I understood it from the few shreds of documentation that actually
mention the grafts file, the grafts file is *not* being cloned.
Therefore, my assumption was that cloning a repository that has a grafts
file gives an identical result to cloning the same repository *without*
the grafts file present.

As I understand it now, the cloning process actually peeks at the grafts
file while cloning, and then doesn't copy it.  This results in a rather
confusingly corrupt clone.

I suggest two things:
a. That during the cloning process, the grafts file is completely
   disregarded in any case at first.
b. Preferably the grafts file is copied as well (after cloning).  I
   never really understood why the file is not being copied in the first
   place (anyone care to explain that?).
-- 
Sincerely,
           Stephen R. van den Berg.

Differentiation is an integral part of calculus.