Re: `git add <<windows 8.3 path to file inside repo>>` results in "fatal: ... is outside repository"

From: Torsten Bögershausen <tboegi@web.de>
Date: Mar 11, 2019, 17:55 UTC
Message-ID: <20190311175519.6lbppv5u44w2u4sj@tb-raspi4>
In-Reply-To: <10972e0e-7fe1-437f-efe6-cff82a1205e0@kdbg.org>

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 06:48:11PM +0100, Johannes Sixt wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Am 10.03.19 um 23:41 schrieb Anthony Sottile:
> > git init longname-repo
> > cd longname-repo
> > touch f
> > git add ..\longna~1\f
> >
> ...
> >
> > C:\Users\Anthony\AppData\Local\Temp\t\pre-commit-hooks\longname-repo>git
> > add ..\longna~1\f
> > fatal: ..\longna~1\f: '..\longna~1\f' is outside repository
>
> This has nothing to do with long vs. short path names. It would report
> the same error when you say
>
>   git add ..\longname-repo\f
>
> -- Hannes

You can probably do another test:

 mkdir longname-rexxx
 git init longname-repo
 cd longname-repo
 touch f
 git add ..\longna~1\f

And now nobody knows for shure if "longna~1" is longname-rexxx or longname-repo

It may happen that it is longname-rep at this point in time, at your machine. It may happen that it is a complete different directory on another machine, or even on your machine. For that reason, to avoid that someone tampers data outside a repo, "../" (or ..\ under windows) is not accepted by Git.