From: Frédéric Heitzmann Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:13:52 GMT Subject: Re: Need to set GIT_WORK_TREE when setting GIT_DIR !? Message-ID: <4F5D1590.9050306@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: Hi all, My initial mistake was that I unintenionnaly created a bare repo (which is really not what I want to do). If I change that - GIt_DIR=.gita git init --no-bare - everything runs fine. Lessons learned : 1/ the kind of repo - bare or not bare - that git init creates depends on GIT_DIR. This _is_ documented - I should have read more carefully - but it is surprising for someone not aware of the history of GIT_DIR, GIT_WORK_TREE, and so on. Don't know if it 's worth changing this semantic though. I let more experienced git hackers decide on this. 2/ Calling a git command that needs a working tree (add, status, commit, ...) in a bare repo should probably trigger a more explicit message. Using the current directory if GIT_WORK_TREE is not set would actually hide a potential configuration problem. Thanks for your help, -- Fred