I have many jobs that use the same set of git repos and/or submodules.

I'm using the reference repo feature of the git plugin to conserve space, but this still requires some bootstrapping on each node where I want to use the repo.

What I'm imagining is a mode of operation where there's a top level mirror clone for each node and repo at the start of a job by default.

Example:

Let's say I have a git repo like:

git@github.com:fooproject/foo.git

That has submodules:

git@some.gitosis.com:/path/to/foosub1.git
git@github.com:myproj/foosub2.git

What I'd want is on the node when the job first runs, it does a mirror clone for each component to an encoded directory:

$JENKINS_HOME/gitrepos/git@github.com:fooproject%foo.git
$JENKINS_HOME/gitrepos/git@some.gitosis.com:%path%to%foosub1.git
$JENKINS_HOME/gitrepos/git@github.com:myproj%foosub2.git

When the job runs it would check first for a matching spec under gitrepos, and use that as a reference both for submodules and the main repo as necessary, eliminating the need to manually clone and set a reference repo.

For some users this could be a big savings of time/space.