Re: Destructive side-effect of "cg-status"

From: Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>
Date: Oct 1, 2005, 19:42 UTC
Message-ID: <20051001194216.EE3E5353D8E@atlas.denx.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0510010934290.3378@g5.osdl.org>

In message <Pine.LNX.4.64.0510010934290.3378@g5.osdl.org> Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> Also, arguably we should try to avoid writing the index file when not 
> necessary, although the fact is, that cg-status (and "git status") _do_ 
> need to actually keep it up-to-date in order to do the right thing. Also 
> true of some other programs that might otherwise appear to be read-only 
> (ie I've considered doing the same thing for "git diff").

But shouldn't it be possible to run such commands as "status" and "diff" in a repository for which I have only read permissions? Or how can I find out about the status of another user's repository without actually modifying it?

Also, error reporting is IMHO not sufficient and misleading. For example:

	$ git status 2>&1 | less
	error: open failed
	#
	# Updated but not checked in:
	#   (will commit)
	#
	#       deleted:  CHANGELOG
	#       deleted:  COPYING
	#       deleted:  CREDITS
	#       deleted:  MAINTAINERS
	#       deleted:  MAKEALL
	#       deleted:  Makefile
	#       deleted:  README
	...
	[all files in the repository flagged as "deleted" !]
	#
	error: open failed
	read_cache: Permission denied

The "error: open failed" should at leats include the file name and the errno/strerror message. Same for the "read_cache: Permission denied" - of course, if you knot the git internals you will know what this means, but the average user has no idea that he should check the permissions of .git/index.

Finally, a thick fat warning should be added to the documentation that these commands actually (may) modify the repository. This was totally unexpected for me.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
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