From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Marc Herbert Subject: git clone, hardlinks and multiple users? Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:31:59 +0000 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Jan 20 22:55:13 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RoMQQ-0006E8-CJ for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:55:10 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755279Ab2ATVzF (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:55:05 -0500 Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:44042 "EHLO lo.gmane.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753969Ab2ATVzE (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:55:04 -0500 Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RoMQJ-0006BW-8c for git@vger.kernel.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:55:03 +0100 Received: from irdmzpr01-ext.ir.intel.com ([192.198.151.36]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:55:03 +0100 Received: from Marc.Herbert+news by irdmzpr01-ext.ir.intel.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:55:03 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: irdmzpr01-ext.ir.intel.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Hi, "git clone" is using hardlinks by default, even when cloning from a different user. In such a case the clone ends up with a number of files owned by someone else. Since only immutable objects are cloned this seems to work fine. However I would like to know if this "multiple users" case works by chance or by specification. In other words, is there a guarantee that no later version of git or no obscure option I haven't used yet will ever try to touch a hardlink in any way like for instance: trying update some metadata timestamp or, overwrite it with the same value by lack of optimization, or any other kind of side-effect that would obviously fail. Thanks in advance! Marc