What exactly is a "grafted" commit in a shallow clone?

git git-clone
Sascha Wolf picture Sascha Wolf · Dec 4, 2014 · Viewed 11.5k times · Source

When doing a shallow clone in git (using the --depth option), the root commit is marked as grafted.

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Googling didn't lead to any satisfacting documentation.

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with git grafts, which the similar terminology would imply.
Is it just a flag to signal that this commit actually has more parents and isn't the "real" root commit? Or is there something more special about it?

Answer

mgarciaisaia picture mgarciaisaia · Dec 4, 2014

From your link:

It works by letting users record fake ancestry information for commits. This way you can make git pretend the set of parents a commit has is different from what was recorded when the commit was created.

In a shallow clone, your root commit is one that should have parents, but not in your repo. So it seems a good use case for grafting.

In effect:

Def.: Shallow commits do have parents, but not in the shallow repo, and therefore grafts are introduced pretending that these commits have no parents.

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