Re: [RFC 4/6] git-check-attr: Normalize paths

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 2, 2011, 17:24 UTC
Message-ID: <7v4o1zg20r.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1311849425-9057-5-git-send-email-mhagger@alum.mit.edu>

Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 1. I'm not sure whether it is correct to fix this problem at the level
>    of git-check-attr, or whether the fix belongs in the API layer.
>    What is the convention for API functions?  Do they typically take
>    path names relative to the CWD or relative to the working tree
>    root, or ...?

I think passing down "prefix" (i.e. where your $(cwd) was relative to the root level of the working tree) and the user-supplied "pathspec" (which typically is relative to that original $(cwd)) is the canonical approach. The very original git worked only at the root level of the working tree, with paths specified relative to the root level of the tree, so many code do:

	- find out the root of the working tree;
        - note where the $(cwd) was in "prefix";
        - chdir to the root of the working tree;
	- prepend the "prefix" to user supplied pathspec;
        - forget all the complexity and work on the whole tree.

Then the "prefix" gets stripped away from the beginning of the paths when reporting.

Your patch from a cursory look seems to follow that pattern, which is good.