Re: GIT_DIR question

From: Matthias Lederhofer <matled@gmx.net>
Date: Jun 17, 2007, 21:52 UTC
Message-ID: <20070617215235.GA27753@moooo.ath.cx>
In-Reply-To: <f36b08ee0706170834m464ce57dl3fd5b549b23abb16@mail.gmail.com>

Yakov Lerner <iler.ml@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> I wanted to create cloned repo, but with metaninfo separately from data.
> I cloned the repo ( git-clone ~/repo ~/x) ,
> then I moved ~/x/.git to different place (mv ~/x/.git ~/git);
> then exported GIT_DIR=~/git; then
> cd ~/x;
> But now 'git status' says 'fatal: runstatus must be run in a work tree' . 
> Why ?
> 
> 'ls $GIT_DIR'  shows
>  FETCH_HEAD  HEAD  ORIG_HEAD  branches  config
>  description  hooks  index  info  logs  objects  refs
> This is ok, no ?

With current git you have to name the repository directory '.git' to use it with a working tree. Some commands work even though the repository is named differently, others don't.

In pu is a patch series by me which changes this. First of all the core.bare option is used all the time, the directory name of the repository does not matter if core.bare is specified. Additionally you can specify the working tree through the config option core.worktree or the environment variable GIT_WORK_TREE. With this you can even work in a subdirectory of the working tree. But this is only in pu and it is not decided yet if this will make it into master, even though I hope it will. Perhaps more people asking for this helps :)