Re: confusing GIT_DIR behavior case

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 17, 2008, 23:00 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8x0harbt.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1205793829.5984.1242927563@webmail.messagingengine.com>

"Britton Kerin" <bkerin@fastmail.fm> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

>    1.  GIT_DIR (and --git-dir) should make git behave exactly as if git
>    was 
>        wired to look for $GIT_DIR rather than '.git'.  The occurence of
>        the
>        GIT_DIR description in the top-level man page (for 'man git')
>        seems to
>        suggest that this is how things work.

That's underdescribing things. Presense of GIT_DIR means much more than that (e.g. you are at the top-level of the repository unless you have WORK_TREE).

>    4.  The noob docs should make some mention of this issue.

Which "noob docs" did you look at (and do you think other people would most likely to look at)? I think the most important description they need is not to mess with these environment variables. It might sometimes be needed to move .git away from its default place (and I haven't been in that situation yet, so you have to be more advanced than me ;-)), but if you are doing such a non-default thing, you are certainly no longer "noob".