Re: Multiple checkout copies

[Paul Eggert]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> How does one get from the one t the other?  I am lost.

For the first copy, you need to get a local copy of the repository, something I 
assume you've already done.  Something like this:

$ git clone address@hidden:/srv/git/emacs.git master
Cloning into 'master'...
remote: Counting objects: 721802, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (133955/133955), done.
remote: Total 721802 (delta 589941), reused 718606 (delta 587176)
Receiving objects: 100% (721802/721802), 191.46 MiB | 4.04 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (589941/589941), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

This first step is expensive, since it copies the repository across the network 
into the subdirectory 'master', and creates working files there too.  On my home 
GNU/Linux desktop, this took 4.6 minutes and the resulting directory consumed 
365 MB of disk space (222 MB for the repository and 144 MB for the working files).

For the second copy, you clone the repository locally, like this:

$ git clone master devel
Cloning into 'devel'...
done.

This second step is cheap: it took less than a second on my desktop.  It copies 
working files into the subdirectory 'devel', but it hard-links the repository 
rather than copying it, so it consumes only 144 MB (i.e., enough for the second 
copy of the working files).

Although the two subdirectories have logically independent repositories, the 
second repository costs almost nothing to create.