Re: [PATCH] Allow cloning an empty repository

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 03:42:24AM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 02:24, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> > > I think the basic idea is Ok, but is it a reliable check at this point to
> > > see if (refs == NULL) to tell if the target repository is an empty one?
> > 
> > This is the question I asked Dscho, and he said/guessed that it was.
> > 
> > > I am mostly worried about a failure case (connected but couldn't get 
> > > the refs, or perhaps connection failed to start).  If you get a NULL 
> > > in such a case you may end up saying "oh you cloned a void" when you 
> > > should say "nah, such a remote repository does not exist".
> > 
> > Yes, this was my concern as well.
> 
> From what I can see in get_remote_heads(), the native protocols would 
> die(), as would rsync().
> 
> HTTP transport, however, would not die() on connection errors, from my 
> cursory look.
> 
> That might be skewed, though, as I am on top of Mike's patches (in the 
> hopefully not so futile hope that Mike -- after letting me wait for over 
> one year -- finishes his work.

As I said when posting my patch batch, I don't have much time nor
motivation to work on this series. But let's make a deal: if someone
writes a good enough http test suite, I'll polish the http code.

Mike