Re: [PATCH] rev-parse --git-path: fix output when running in a subdirectory

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 10, 2017, 04:21 UTC
Message-ID: <20170210042115.d4kmdf4obxqwobv4@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqo9ybnie0.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 01:50:31PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> > There is just no way you can "fix" this otherwise. As an occasional shell
> > scripter, you may be tempted to use `$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)$(git
> > rev-parse --git-path filename)`, but of course that breaks in worktrees
> > and if you do not use worktrees you would not even know that your
> > workaround introduced another bug.
> 
> In case it is not clear, I understand all of the above.  
> 
> I was just worried about the people who do *NOT* use worktrees and
> did the obvious "concatenate --cdup with --git-path" and thought
> their script were working happily and well.  By prepending the path
> to the (real) location of the .git in the updated --git-path output
> ourselves, they will complain, our update broke their script.

That concatenating approach is broken in other ways, too. For example, if you have $GIT_DIR set to an absolute path, then --git-path will use that. I don't think we have ever promised that the output of --git-path (or --git-dir) would ever be absolute or relative (in fact, the --git-dir documentation implies that you may get either).

So yes, there could be somebody who is doing this concatenation workaround, but only ever calls their script in a certain way that never triggers the absolute-path variant. They're happy now, and may not be after Dscho's patch. But I really think they are relying on a bogus assumption, and their scripts are already buggy.

-Peff