Re: `git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree` and $GIT_WORK_TREE

From: John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>
Date: Mar 29, 2016, 12:33 UTC
Message-ID: <20160329123306.GD1578@serenity.lan>
In-Reply-To: <CAPZ477PD7SkRg7T_Y_n27Hjw5TeW6Sh0-vtoP6-4xUDraC7OiA@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 06:53:35AM -0500, Elliott Cable wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Elliott Cable <me@ell.io> wrote:
> > So, I find this behaviour a little strange; I can't determine if it's
> > a subtle bug, or intentionally undefined/‘fuzzy’ behaviour ...
> 
> Oh lord, it gets worse ...
> 
> $ cd a-repo
> $ git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree; git rev-parse --is-inside-git-dir
> true
> false
> $ cd .git
> $ git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree; git rev-parse --is-inside-git-dir
> false
> true

I believe these are working correctly, the .git directory is not part of the working tree.

> $ export GIT_WORK_TREE="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"   # !!!

Did you check the value of GIT_WORK_TREE here? When I try it's the empty string.

If I set the core.worktree config variable to ".." then rev-parse does find the working tree correctly. I recall some previous discussion about this but I can't find it in the list archives from a quick search.

Show 7 quoted lines

> $ git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree; git rev-parse --is-inside-git-dir
> true
> false
> $ # !!?!?
> 
> So, basically, if `$GIT_WORK_TREE` is set at all, it appears that the
> `rev-parse --is-inside...` flags don't function reliably at all.

If you set GIT_WORK_TREE you're telling Git to override all of the normal detection logic. What version of Git are you using? When I try this it says:

	fatal: The empty string is not a valid path

If I set GIT_WORK_TREE to the correct value for this repository then it behaves the same as with the auto-detection logic.