Use gix for cloning repositories

[Caleb-T-Owens]

Looking through my emails this morning I saw this comment from @Byron on cloning azure devops #2651 (comment) (source gix issue: GitoxideLabs/gitoxide#1025) repositories not working through gix. It however made me think: Currently in GitButler, both cloning via SSH URLs and cloning private repositories doesn't work. It also got me wondering if switching to gix, despite the aforementioned issue, could be a quick and easy win that would resolve a large majority of the issues with the current setup. After trying it out, it works pretty much perfectly.

 
     #[tauri::command(async)]
     pub fn git_clone_repository(repository_url: &str, target_dir: &Path) -> Result<(), Error> {
-        git2::Repository::clone(repository_url, target_dir).context("Cloning failed")?;
+        let url =
+            gix::url::parse(repository_url.into()).context("Failed to parse repository URL")?;
+        let should_interrupt = AtomicBool::new(false);
+        let mut prepared_clone =
+            gix::prepare_clone(url, target_dir).context("Failed to prepare clone")?;
+        let (mut prepared_checkout, _) = prepared_clone
+            .fetch_then_checkout(Discard, &should_interrupt)
+            .context("Failed to fetch")?;
+        let should_interrupt = AtomicBool::new(false);
+        prepared_checkout
+            .main_worktree(Discard, &should_interrupt)
+            .context("Failed to checkout main worktree")?;
         Ok(())
     }
 }

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[Byron]

After trying it out, it works pretty much perfectly.

It sure lures you into thinking that 😅. However, you actually have to configure something to be sure it truly works, particularly on Windows. The variable of interest here is git_installation which should be true, that way it will obtain git-installation specific configuration that usually contains all the credential helper invocations, particularly on Windows. As this has to invoke the Git binary, it can be slow (on Windows, at least), so it's not done by default, also because of the security implications.

To get clone to work, it must be done like this though.

In future, should_interrupt should probably be hooked up as well to be turned on if the user tries to abort the operation.

That should be all the gotchas I can think of right now.

[Caleb-T-Owens]

It sure lures you into thinking that 😅. However, you actually have to configure something to be sure it truly works, particularly on Windows. The variable of interest here is git_installation which should be true, that way it will obtain git-installation specific configuration that usually contains all the credential helper invocations, particularly on Windows. As this has to invoke the Git binary, it can be slow (on Windows, at least), so it's not done by default, also because of the security implications.

@Byron Could you show me how to provide that argument? I'm finding the gix documentation quite hard to dig through.

[Byron]

Actually, I was wrong, and since cloning always needs the git binary installation configuration, it will automatically use it.
No change is actually needed.

Also sorry for confusing opening a repository with cloning it - the APIs are very different and it's not obvious how to affect the open-options (but it's possible with gix::clone::PrepareFetch(…) should it be needed at some point).

Maybe the backend could check for azure-devops HTTPS URLs and use git2 for these - this would be an example URL: https://dev.azure.com/bittrance/public/_git/gitoxide, and one whose clone should currently fail with gix.

[krlvi]

lgtm