git-format-patch with -o ../ in subdir of working copy writes output in wrong place

If you are in a subdirectory of your working copy (for instance, linux-2.6/drivers/net) and use git-format-patch with -o to a sequence of ../ (for instance, -o ../../../) to write to the working copy's parent directory, it instead interprets the directory passed to -o as relative to the root of the working copy, instead of the expected current directory.

Testcase: mkdir a cd a git init mkdir b touch b/c git add b/c git commit -m 'test' cd b echo 'test' > c git commit -a -m 'test' git format-patch -o ../ HEAD^..HEAD

Expected result: put the patch within the "a" directory Result with v1.6.1: put the patch within the parent of the "a" directory

(This testcase uses ../ instead of ../../ to avoid putting the patch file in an unexpected place, like in your home directory, which is what would happen in practice.)