Re: [PATCH 0/4] repo: add support for path-related fields

From: Lucas Seiki Oshiro <lucasseikioshiro@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 1, 2026, 19:40 UTC
Message-ID: <491CD222-D595-4408-B78C-72E4C3DA0A62@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <c074cec5-eaac-49d0-89cc-d2ac9d605e59@gmail.com>

> Hi Lucas

Hi, Phillip!

> How does this effort relate to similar effort at at
> https://lore.kernel.org/pull.2208.v5.git.git.1772220640.gitgitgadget@gmail.com ?

I have this patch series started since July, but I could only send this after having my two previous changes in git-repo-info accepted.

I think that patch series you mentioned is based on some previous message (or the GSoC project ideas) where I listed what was still need to be implemented. It uses a similar --path-format flag, but without dealing with the multiple possibilities currently used by git-rev-parse (see [1]).

The original print_path from git-rev-parse has four possible default formats (relative, relative if there's a shared root, canonical (absolute), and unmodified), and we can force it to use the relative or absolute formats. If I understood it correctly, this complex logic was added ([1]) to allow the user to force one of these two formats without breaking the default behavior. Since git-repo-info is a new command, we are free from being compatible with that, and perhaps this doesn't make sense.

Since there are many people interested in contributing to git-repo-info, especially in the path-* fields, I just wanted to finish what I have here and leave the rest for them :-)

Show 6 quoted lines

>> 1. Add --path-format, just like we have in git-rev-parse
> 
> I think that's the best solution. Having different defaults
> for different paths like rev-parse is confusing and having
> different keys for absolute and relative versions of the
> same path gets rather verbose.

I agree, but I still think that it feels weird that we won't be able return absolute and relative paths in a single git-repo-info call. But it also won't cost too much to call it twice.

> Thanks

Thanks, Phillip! Phillip

PS: I'm also CC'ing:

- Eslam (the author of the patch mentioned by Phillip)
- Karthik, Justin, Ayush, and Siddhart (possible mentors for
  "Improve the new git repo command")
- Patrick, who was my GSoC mentor and the person I first
  discussed with about --path-format

[1] fac60b8925 (rev-parse: add option for absolute or relative path formatting, 2020-12-13)