RE: git-dir requires work-tree; documentation improvements for working directory

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 2, 2021, 19:12 UTC
Message-ID: <5ff0c58422038_90dc208ea@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <CA+RLzGCtp2T=8DG74geBs67X5vUvhwRP4FMZ6MJv+E+Pj=YbWw@mail.gmail.com>

Yaroslav Nikitenko wrote:

> I use git to manage my dotfiles with this command:
> 
>     git --git-dir=/home/yaroslav/.cfg/ --work-tree=/home/yaroslav

I do precisely the same thing.

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> When reading documentation, I noticed two issues.
> 
> 1) The command doesn't work without --work-tree (even from the top
> level directory, which is my home directory).
> 
>     [~]$ git --git-dir=/home/yaroslav/.cfg/ status
>     fatal: this operation must be run in a work tree

That's weird. It works fine here (although I don't see why I would want that).

If you remove all your configuration does it still fail?

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> 2) In the man documentation for git > git-dir it's written
> "It can be an absolute path or relative path to current working directory."
> I think this can be confused with work-tree. I suggest removing the
> word 'working' (and probably add an article 'the' before the
> 'current', but I'm not a native speaker).

Yes, the article is missing, as for the rest I have no opinion.

> I don't subscribe to the mailing list but hope that I'll receive the replies.

Don't worry. The git mailing list doesn't munge the Reply-To header, so any decent MUA will keep you in Cc.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras