Document remote-helper scheme support · Entire

Document remote-helper scheme support

68c4b44→main·

Soph·4w ago·2 files·+37 added/-0 removed

Add a "Remote-helper schemes" section to docs/usage.md and a README FAQ entry
explaining that git-sync falls back to git-remote- for non-native URL
schemes, with entire:// as the motivating example, and noting the --stats
throughput caveat shared with SSH.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) noreply@anthropic.com

Sessions

91460e76a6dfView transcript

[?
❯ GITSYNC_MAX_REF_UPDATES_PER_PUSH=5000 go run ./cmd/git-sync replicate --all-refs --stats --verbose \Claude Code·Opus 4.8[1m]·3 steps](/content/gh/entireio/git-sync/session/4f8f5e9b-9f90-4c22-88b9-988c55f45833#timeline-91460e76a6df/index.html)

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`ssh://`, SCP-style `git@host:path.git`, and `git+ssh://` URLs. See  
[docs/usage.md](docs/usage.md) for details and current caveats.

### What about other URL schemes (e.g. `entire://`)?

For any scheme it has no native transport for, `git-sync` falls back to a git  
remote helper named `git-remote-<scheme>` on `PATH`, exactly as `git` does. With  
`git-remote-entire` installed, `entire://` URLs work for both fetch and push and  
authenticate through the helper. See  
[Remote-helper schemes](docs/usage.md#remote-helper-schemes).

### Does it run as a daemon or watch for changes?

No. `git-sync` is a one-shot CLI/library operation. To sync on a schedule or in response to events, run it from cron, CI, a worker, or another service.

MREADME.md+8

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If `ssh` is not available on `PATH`, `git-sync` fails early with a clear  
`locate ssh binary` error before contacting either remote.

### Remote-helper schemes

For any URL scheme `git-sync` has no native transport for, it looks for a git  
remote helper named `git-remote-<scheme>` on `PATH` — the same mechanism `git`  
itself uses for custom schemes. If one is installed, `git-sync` delegates auth  
and the network round trips to it while still driving the smart protocol over  
the helper's `stateless-connect` bridge.

The motivating case is Entire's own `entire://` URLs:

```bash
git-sync replicate --all-refs \
https://github.com/source-org/source-repo.git \
entire://cluster-host/et/project/repo
```

This requires `git-remote-entire` (installed by the Entire CLI) on `PATH`.  
Authentication — including the Entire context model and OAuth token refresh —  
is handled entirely by the helper, so no `--target-token` is needed when you're  
already logged in via the CLI. Both fetch (upload-pack, protocol v2) and push  
(receive-pack) work through the helper.

`http`/`https`/`ssh` are never routed to a helper: `git-sync` always uses its  
own optimized transports for those, even though `git` ships  
`git-remote-http(s)`.

Like SSH, the helper bridge has no per-request byte accounting, so `--stats`  
omits helper-side throughput (the other side's throughput still prints).

## Sync Behavior

`sync` picks the bootstrap relay path automatically when the target is empty. For non-empty targets, safe fast-forward updates also use a relay path that streams the source pack directly into target `receive-pack` without local materialization. Anything not relay-eligible (force, prune, deletes, tag retargets) falls back to a materialized path bounded by `--materialized-max-objects`.

Mdocs/usage.md+29