Re: git fetch --all --depth

[Kacper Kornet <kornet@camk.edu.pl>]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 09:36:55AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Kacper Kornet <kornet@camk.edu.pl> writes:

> > I have just discovered that when I use:

> > git fetch --all --depth=<n> 

> > the history is not deepened. Is the any specific reason for it or is it
> > a bug?

> The above is not specific enough to judge if you found a bug or if it is a
> user error.

To be more specific, the steps to reproduce:

$ git clone --depth=1 git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
$ cd git
$ git fetch --depth 2 --all

and the last command does nothing, while

$ git fetch --depth 2 

deepens the clone by 2 repos, as expected.

> IIRC, --depth=<n> is not "deepen by <n>", but "make sure I have at least
> <n> from the updated tip(s)".  The shallow-clone hack gives you quite
> useless (even though it may be internally consistent) semantics if you
> shallow-cloned way in the past and fetched with --depth after the other
> side added many more commits than <n>, as you cannot guess what the right
> value of <n> should be without actually fetching without --depth.

That is true. Also, from esthetic point of view, sometimes I miss the
functionality to deepen the full repository. For example git fetch
--depth 0 could do it. Now I have to do git fetch --depth
<very_large_number>

-- 
  Kacper Kornet