[pacman-dev] [PATCH 4/4] makepkg: git: update existing sources in srcdir without removing them first.

[Ido Rosen]

Oh, also:

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Ido Rosen <ido at kernel.org> wrote:
> If saving yourself the step of having to "git clone" again is your
> only goal, here are two possible ways to solve that problem:
>
> 1) Use the $GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES environment variable or
> .git/objects/info/alternates file mechanism, and use an object store
> that is detached from the git clone, e.g. in some generic directory
> (e.g. $startdir/gitobjects), and don't delete that directory.  That
> way, git will not re-download the objects (actual data) that it
> already fetched, only update the refs and fill in the missing objects
> in the object store you specify. See
> https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitrepository-layout.html
> for more info...)
>
> 2) Make sure to set the git remote each time when updating, using the
> appropriate "git remote" command.  This has the downside that you are
> replicating "git clone" functionality.
>

3) Avoidance strategy: Don't clone/fetch all the objects in the
repository first place by doing a "shallow clone" by setting the
--depth in git clone.
https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-clone.html

> Your patches for Mercurial, SVN, etc. have a similar problem...