Support filesystem-based remote repositories

[chrispy-snps]

Git supports the ability to clone from an upstream repository stored on a filesystem:

git clone /path/to/upstream_repo local_repo

Currently, the Oxygen Git add-on does not support this:

• It does not fetch updates from a filesystem remote to check for pending commits to pull.
  • If I do a git fetch at a shell prompt, then it does show the pending commits to pull.
• It does not understand how to pull from a filesystem remote ("No remote repository found for the provided URL").
  • If I do a git pull at a shell prompt, then it does understand the pulled content.
• It does not understand how to push to a filesystem remote ("This repository has no remotes. Please provide one.")
  • If I do a git push at a shell prompt, then the plugin does understand the pushed content in the other repo.

For me, this feature would be useful to construct standalone merge-conflict testcases for my writers to experiment with, where they could safely introduce and experiment with conflicts between two repositories:

www.oxygenxml.com/forum - Prompt for confirmation when discarding staged files in a merge context

This feature could theoretically also be used for direct writer-to-writer handoff of work using network filesystems, which was the original reason that Git supported filesystem remotes, although I have no need for this.

A testcase is included:

git_conflict_filesystem_remote.zip

To use it, run the make_git.sh script to construct the "local" and "upstream" repository directories, then run Oxygen in each directory and experiment with pulling and pushing changes.

This is not an urgent need for us, but it would be a nice feature to have (low priority).

[sorincarbunaru]

Note: internal issue ID is EXM-50527.