Subject: Re: [BUG] Destructive access to an "objects/info/alternates" repository

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 14:29:03 -0500

>>     git clone --reference ~otheruser/nongnu
>
> This doesn't appear to be a proper command, because it's missing actual
> repository to clone, only the repository to use as reference. This is the
> proper usage of --reference:
>
> git clone --reference ~/some/repo https://some/remote/repo.git

Indeed, thanks:

git clone --reference ~otheruser/nongnu https://git.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/nongnu.git

> Without knowing exactly what you did, it's hard to tell what went wrong. You
> can try running "find nongnu" to see if what you think is your own checkout is
> actually a symlink or some combination thereof.

Not sure what you mean by that.

In any case, I just reproduced the problem:

    % git clone --reference ~otheruser/nongnu https://git.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/nongnu.git
    Cloning into 'nongnu'...
    Fetching objects: 36974, done.
    % cd nongnu 
    % git gc
    Enumerating objects: 36974, done.
    Nothing new to pack.
    warning: unable to unlink '/home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack/pack-0d85e74ac2f7e51ce26f281e64eb738e8182fa95.idx': Permission denied
    warning: unable to unlink '/home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack/pack-5fe14feff49ccdee5469af9dc94f6784e8464a6b.idx': Permission denied
    % ls -l /home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack/pack-0d85e74ac2f7e51ce26f281e64eb738e8182fa95.idx
    -rw-r--r-- 1 otheruser otheruser 975612 Dec 11 16:08 /home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack/pack-0d85e74ac2f7e51ce26f281e64eb738e8182fa95.idx
    % ls -ld /home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack
    drwxr-xr-x 2 otheruser otheruser 4096 Dec 27 17:57 /home/otheruser/nongnu/.git/objects/pack/
    %

-- Stefan