Re: How to stop sharing objects between repositories

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 04:21:22AM +0200, Mike Galbraith wrote:
>
>> >  (1) Such a user does not necessarily know a casual "git repack -a" breaks
>> >      the dependency, defeating the -s option s/he deliberately used in
>> >      order to save disk space in the first place.  Perhaps we can reword
>> >      this further to kill two penguins with a single stone?
>> 
>> Perhaps a runtime warning that you're about to break it?  This user may
>> not even be the one who set the thing up, no?
>
> I'm not really sure what such a setup would look like....
> ...
> That being said, I can see there being setups where such a warning might
> be useful. However, we don't really know if the user _wants_ that
> effect, or if it is an accident.
> ...
> "here is how you break the dependency" advice will also get the warning.
>
> I'm torn on whether this is actually a good idea.

I would understand if you were torn if the proposed change were to refuse
to run without -l in a repository with alternates when --force is not
given, or something of that nature.

But I can tell you that this "just warn" cannot be a good idea for a very
simple reason: breaking and then warning is useless---it is too late for
the user to do anything about it.