From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
To: "L. E. Segovia" <amy@amyspark.me>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [BUG] Clones from local repositories do not work correctly under Windows
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 18:16:35 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <01cf64db-2ff5-4be5-8968-d280ab0ffc50@kdbg.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <e25bbce7-8338-430b-865f-690fe3c94fb6@amyspark.me>
Am 12.04.24 um 15:05 schrieb L. E. Segovia:
> Under a MSYS2 shell, follow these steps (feel free to replace the choice
> of remote repo with any other supporting a Rust crate):
>
> 1. `cd` to a directory of your choice (let's call it `dirA`).
> 2. `git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/librsvg.git .`
> 3. `git checkout -b cerbero_build`.
> 4. `cd ..`
> 5. `git clone <full path to dirA> -s -b cerbero_build dirB`
> 6. `cd dirB`
> 7. `git status`
>
> Now switch to any other shell of your choice, such as Git Bash, CMD, or
> PowerShell, and try issuing commands such as `git status`. It will
> result in a wall of "error: unable to normalize..."
Thanks, that is much more helpful. Here are my assumption, my
explanation of the symptoms, and the conclusion (which is basically "if
it hurts, don't do it"):
I assume that you have two installations of Git. One installation is
used when you use the git command from the MSYS2 shell; it is the MSYS2
version. The other installation is Git for Windows or equivalent that is
used by all the other shells.
When you clone a repository with -s, a .git/objects/info/alternates file
is initialized that contains the path to the original repository. You
can see its contents with `git count-objects -v`. I tested the
reproduction recipe with my own build (which is a MinGW build, much like
Git for Windows), and it looks like this:
C:\Temp\repoclone>git count-objects -v
count: 0
size: 0
in-pack: 0
packs: 0
size-pack: 0
prune-packable: 0
garbage: 0
size-garbage: 0
alternate: C:/Temp/repoorig/.git/objects
See the last line? It begins with a drive letter. When you call the
command with the MSYS2 version, it will look more like this:
alternate: /c/Temp/repoorig/.git/objects
This is the MSYS2/Cygwin absolute path with a "drive letter".
Unfortunately, this kind of path is unintelligible for Git for Windows.
It expects absolute paths to begin with drive letter-colon or a
double-slash or double-backslash. For this reason, it reports "unable to
normalize alternate object path".
The conclusion is: Do not use two different flavors of Git on a
repository that is set up with a link to an alternate repository.
BTW, I did not do the followup test with `git am`. (Actually, I did, but
there were no errors.) So, I cannot tell why your MSYS2 version suddenly
also reports the "unable to normalize" error.
-- Hannes
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-04-12 16:16 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-04-11 17:03 [BUG] Clones from local repositories do not work correctly under Windows L. E. Segovia
2024-04-12 6:56 ` Johannes Sixt
2024-04-12 13:05 ` L. E. Segovia
2024-04-12 16:16 ` Johannes Sixt [this message]
2024-04-12 17:19 ` L. E. Segovia
2024-04-12 17:32 ` Junio C Hamano
2024-04-12 17:41 ` rsbecker
2024-04-12 20:10 ` L. E. Segovia
2024-04-12 21:53 ` Johannes Sixt
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