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doc: Document challenges of tags with git fetcher

Message ID 20230904100018.2677165-1-richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org
State Accepted, archived
Commit 56224da378ab63526d44fd7a70bcfd2cffe245cc
Headers show
Series doc: Document challenges of tags with git fetcher | expand

Commit Message

Richard Purdie Sept. 4, 2023, 10 a.m. UTC
Using tags with the git fetcher may cause surprising behaviour. There
are reasons for this, document them.

Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>
---
 doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-fetching.rst | 8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
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Patch

diff --git a/doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-fetching.rst b/doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-fetching.rst
index f5723d6767..c905288c48 100644
--- a/doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-fetching.rst
+++ b/doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-fetching.rst
@@ -476,6 +476,14 @@  Here are some example URLs::
    easy to share metadata without removing passwords. SSH keys, ``~/.netrc``
    and ``~/.ssh/config`` files can be used as alternatives.
 
+Using tags with the git fetcher may cause surprising behaviour. Bitbake needs to
+resolve the tag to a specific revision and to do that, it has to connect to and use
+the upstream repository. This is because the revision the tags point at can change and
+we've seen cases of this happening in well known public repositories. This can mean
+many more network connections than expected and recipes may be reparsed at every build.
+Source mirrors will also be bypassed as the upstream repository is the only source
+of truth to resolve the revision accurately. For these reasons, whilst the fetcher
+can support tags, we recommend being specific about revisions in recipes.
 
 .. _gitsm-fetcher: