Re: Git drawbacks?

[Jacob Helwig <jacob.helwig@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 23:53, Dmitry Smirnov <divis1969@gmail.com> wrote:
>  <david <at> lang.hm> writes:
>
>> going back to the initial poster's comments. if the android repo is 1G,
>> eliminating the history will probably have significantly less impact than
>> you expect it to.
>
> Do you have 2 or more copies of the same repository at the same time?
> If yes, can I skip cloning new copy from network?
> Or even skip cloning it at all?
> Is it possible with Git to chekout into two (few) working trees?
>

Take a look at git-new-workdir.  It's in the contrib directory of
git.git.  This lets you skip re-cloning the same repository over
again, if you want a new working copy of it.  It'll also give you some
space savings, by sharing certain key things in the .git directory
between working copies, by using symlinks.

It does have a few caveats, however.  If you have the same branch
checked out in two different working copies created using
git-new-workdir, and update the branch in one of them, then the other
will appear to have a bunch of staged changes, even though you haven't
done anything in it. The branch pointer will have been updated out
from underneath it, and it will be "confused".  As long as you
remember not to update a branch that is checked out in more than one
place on your machine, you'll never notice, thuogh.