From here: http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS "Causes tarballs of the Git repositories to be placed in the DL_DIR directory. For performance reasons, creating and placing tarballs of the Git repositories is not the default action by the OpenEmbedded build system." It is not clear to me whether it means it only archives like "git archive" does which does not get the git metadata for you, or it will get the source as well as the gita meta information. I think it could be more explicit, so I am prosing something like this along the lines: "Causes tarballs of the Git repositories>>>, including the git metadata,<<< to be placed in the DL_DIR directory. For performance reasons, creating and placing tarballs of the Git repositories is not the default action by the OpenEmbedded build system." This is a minor fix, and would help people like me. It would not cause any misunderstanding for other people either, IMO.
I have implemented the suggested change to the variable description. Thanks for noting this Laszlo. You can see the change at http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.6/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS Scott
Many thanks; you rock. :)