git-lfs has to be installed to clone or merge from repo

[huddlej]

Current Behavior
When cloning the auspice repository (or trying to merge into an existing repo), I get the following error:

$ git clone https://github.com/nextstrain/auspice
Cloning into 'auspice'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 27630, done.
remote: Total 27630 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 27630
Receiving objects: 100% (27630/27630), 13.95 MiB | 1.99 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (20366/20366), done.
git-lfs smudge -- 'test/integration/__image_snapshots__/Color-by:author-snap.png': git-lfs: command not found
error: external filter git-lfs smudge -- %f failed -1
error: external filter git-lfs smudge -- %f failed
fatal: test/integration/__image_snapshots__/Color-by:author-snap.png: smudge filter lfs failed
warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
and retry the checkout with 'git checkout -f HEAD'

Expected behavior

According to the DEV_DOCS, I should not need to have git-lfs installed unless I am running tests.

Possible solution

I think the .gitattributes file need to be modified somehow to prevent lfs from being required on clone/merge. If that isn't possible, it might be better to disable the LFS filter for now.

Environment

$ git --version
git version 2.10.0

[jameshadfield]

Thanks for the detailed bug report here John. We can't have a situation where "git-lfs" is essential just to clone the repo. I was under the impression that this wouldn't happen -- without git-lfs installed the png files would simply be small text pointers rather than the actual file -- but this doesn't seem to be the case. Interestingly (confusingly), certain jobs in the GitHub CI checkout the repo without lfs and are working fine.

@eharkins (or anyone else), if you haven't already installed git-lfs could you see if you can reproduce this?

Also, @anescobar1991 do you have suggestions here?

[tsibley]

I believe that git lfs is, correctly, not required. For example, I can clone the repo freshly without issue and without git lfs installed.

Looking more closely at the error message, I believe the issue is that the lfs filter, diff, and merge drivers are configured in @huddlej's git config but git lfs isn't actually installed anymore. e.g. a previous installation of git lfs was incompletely uninstalled.

[huddlej]

@tsibley's conclusion is correct here. Removing my old LFS settings from .gitconfig fixed this problem. Thanks all and sorry for the false alarm!