Re: git status always modifies index?

From: Nathan Neulinger <nneul@neulinger.org>
Date: Nov 22, 2017, 15:37 UTC
Message-ID: <5050d779-2981-6f06-49f7-0ecb4efb25b8@neulinger.org>
In-Reply-To: <20171122153028.olssotkcf3dd6ron@LykOS.localdomain>

What I'm meaning is - why does it need to write the index back out to disk?

 From looking at the code in builtin/commit.c it looks like it takes a lock on the index, collects the status, and then 
unconditionally rewrites the index file.

I'm proposing that the update_index_if_able call not actually be issued if it would result in a ownership change on the underlying file - such as a simple case of root user or other privileged account issuing 'git status' in a directory.

I understand completely that it would be expected to be altered if the privileged user did a commit/add or any other operation that was inherently a 'write' operation, but doesn't seem like status should be one of those cases.

-- Nathan

On 11/22/17 9:30 AM, Santiago Torres wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Hi Nathan.
> 
> Do you mean git-status writing an index file? What would you suggest for
> git-status to compute which files have changed without modifying an
> index-file? Or are you suggesting git-status to fail if the index file
> doesn't belong to the user-id who invoked the command...
> 
> Thanks,
> -Santiago
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan Neulinger                       nneul@neulinger.org
Neulinger Consulting                   (573) 612-1412