Re: builtin command's prefix question

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 5, 2007, 23:43 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8x48lnce.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vk5nsloa8.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 20 quoted lines

> I am not convinced this is giving any natural user experience, nor an
> alternative:
>
>       $ cd $HOME
>       $ GIT_WORK_TREE=$HOME; export GIT_WORK_TREE
>       $ cd $HOME/gits/vimrc.git
>       $ edit $HOME/.vimrc
>       $ git commit .vimrc
>       $ cd $HOME/gits/pinerc.git
>       $ edit $HOME/.pinerc
>       $ git commit .pinerc
>
> While I still think the combination is simply crazy and does not make
> any sense, if enough users on the list agrees that it makes sense, I
> wouldn't mind setup() did (1) to (3) mentioned above.  The alternative
> is simply to declare GIT_WORK_TREE without GIT_DIR is a nonsense and
> either error error out or ignore GIT_WORK_TREE, which might be easier to
> explain to people.
>
> Opinions?

Side note.

By saying the above, I do not mean it is nonsense to try supporting a work tree that is an overlay of disjoint set of work tree files from multiple repositories/projects. I do think it is a worthwhile goal to support such a layout.

What I do not like is the way the ugly workaround does it, by encouraging (rather, requiring) to issue git commands from a location that is completely separate from the actual editing of the content happens.

An independent issue of supporting such a overlayed work tree layout is what to do with .gitignore files. I think, especially with the recent addition of --exclude-standard to ls-files and setup_standard_excludes() in dir.c, we could have a per repository configuration that names the per repository exclude files, so that .gitignore-vim and .gitignore-pine can co-exist in $HOME, each excluding everything other than the project's own files.