Git clone Tiki

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The clone operation creates a local repository by copying information from a source repository. In the standard behavior, git will bring the entire changes history from source repository to local repository. That means both source and local repository will have the same history at the clone moment.

Cloning Tiki

The basics

The basic and short syntax is git clone <repository> <directory>, where the mandatory argument <repository> is the source repository path or URL and the optional argument <directory> is the directory name where git will create the local repository.

By default, the clone process creates a repository in a folder with the same name of source repository, so in this case, the folder for local repository will have the name tiki.

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git

By passing a second argument to clone command, it is possible to define the name to the folder for the cloned repository, like the examples below.

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tikiwiki

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git .

Choosing a branch

By default, the clone operation creates a local repository having the current branch set to master. There is an option called --branch to change this behavior. The examples below creates 5 clones, each one with a different branch set.

git clone --branch=30.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30

git clone --branch=29.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki29

git clone --branch=27.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki27

git clone --branch=24.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki24

Please note that the examples above clone Tiki source repository with the entire history.

Dealing with Tiki huge repository

After a decade of contributions, Tiki history sizes 3GB when decompressed locally. That is too big when several Tiki instances is needed. As of now, two approaches were tested to deal with this problem:

• Share git objects with other clones
  • git clone --shared --reference=<local-repository> <repository> [<directory>]
• Trim history size
  • git clone --depth=1 <repository>

git clone --depth=1 --branch=30.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30

More examples:

git clone --depth=1 --branch=27.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki27

git clone --depth=1 --branch=24.x https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git .

Use master (previously called trunk):

git clone --depth=1 --branch=master https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git .

Sharing git history

This is a good approach for developers needing to have the full Tiki history since it saves network bandwidth and disk space. Git is able to borrow information from other local clones when creating a new clone. This reduces the network usage while cloning and reduces disk usage of maintaining several Tiki instances.

Information sharing is set by using the option --reference=<local-repository> and the option --shared , where <local-repository> is another clone made before.

The first step is to create a standard Tiki clone, like the example below.

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tikiwiki

Then, other clones can be created by borrowing the information from the clone above.

git clone --branch=master --reference=./tikiwiki --shared https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tikimaster

git clone --branch=30.x --reference=./tikiwiki --shared https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30

git clone --branch=27.x --reference=./tikiwiki --shared https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki27

git clone --branch=24.x --reference=./tikiwiki --shared https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki24

Trimming git history

Another way to reduce disk and network usage is the --depth=<n> , where <n> is the number of history entries desired to bring. This approach may not be ideal for Tiki development since the change history is not available. But it is a good way to keep track of the file state when installing Tiki in a server.

git clone --branch=30.x --depth=1 https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30

git clone --branch=30.x --depth=2 https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30

For the examples above, just the last <n> commits of branch 30.x will be available on local repository. All other information about branches and tags will not exist on local repository.

It is possible to have a cloned repository with the last <n> commits of each branch available. This is done by passing --no-single-branch to clone command.

Creating a workspace

This is just a suggestion on how to setup a workspace in a development environment. The paths below can be set up in Nginx, Apache or any other webserver.

mkdir "/var/www/html"
cd "/var/www/html"

git clone https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki

git clone --branch=30.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git doc.tiki.org
git clone --branch=30.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git dev.tiki.org
git clone --branch=30.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git example.com
git clone --branch=master --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tikimaster.docker
git clone --branch=30.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki30.docker
git clone --branch=27.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki27.docker
git clone --branch=24.x --shared --reference=./tiki https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki.git tiki24.docker

After above commands, the working space should have this structure:

/var/www/html/tiki
/var/www/html/doc.tiki.org
/var/www/html/dev.tiki.org
/var/www/html/example.com
/var/www/html/tikimaster.docker
/var/www/html/tiki30.docker
/var/www/html/tiki27.docker
/var/www/html/tiki24.docker

Reference

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone