Re: [PATCH 3/8] archive: add a failure test wrt .gitattributes misreading

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 8, 2009, 19:20 UTC
Message-ID: <7vab6rkl5f.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1239185133-4181-4-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

> "git archive" is used to create archives from a tree (or commit), so
> it should not consult any .gitattributes files on working directory.
>
> It currently does,...

...which _might_ be actively used as a _feature_ by people; I do not think it is a bad idea to have a mode of operation where it solely works with in-tree attributes ignoring the work tree ones, and I suspect we probably would want to make that the default, but "so it should not" is probably a bit too strong.

For example, an older version may record $Id$ with keyword expansion set in its in-tree .gitattributes, and you later found it to be a mistake and have removed it in the current version. Re-exporting an older version with the current code wouldn't have $Id$ expanded, but with your patch it will.

A stronger example would be crlf conversion, I suppose, but the same "with the current code we can fix it up but after this patch we can't" worry applies.

So perhaps you may want to resurrect the current behaviour with a new option --fix-attributes, whose description would be "normally the command takes attributes settings from the tree being exported, but .gitattributes files in it may record wrong attributes you may want to fix while exporting. With this option, corresponding .gitattributes files in the work tree will override the in-tree .gitattributes" or something like that.