Re: [git-users] Highlevel (but simple to implement) commands provided by default for git

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 29, 2013, 20:07 UTC
Message-ID: <7v38t5sg7k.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s1VFxarV4Gp5KsxhFKJbmd033-DW8koe9P4XUZQcX4mrA@mail.gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
> <artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bráulio Bhavamitra wrote:
>>>   root = rev-parse --show-toplevel
>>
>> What is your usecase for this?
>
> Some Git commands expect to be in the top level directory (e.g. git blame).

"Git" things we can fix [*1*], but more importantly, build structure of many project may require you to go up to the top to build the whole thing, so being able to get a relative path to the top when you are deep inside is a necessity.

[Footnote]

*1* "blame" is an oddball (and I suspect the recent log -Ln,m:path
    may share the same) in that it really wants a concret path, not
    a pathspec, so you cannot even say

	cd Documentation; git blame :/Makefile

    I think the right fix is to teach it that the argument it has
    been taking as a pathname is actually a pathspec, match the
    pathspec with appropriate place (either in the working tree, or
    in the commit we start digging from), and use the path that the
    pathspec matches to a single one (otherwise barf).