From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:36:10 GMT
Subject: Re: GIT_DIR vs. --git-dir
Message-ID: <7vipb31o9x.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8DHGtktnvvziA_+Fp6a4VFsE9_=zkWKNBJU7Ro_QO+==A@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

> "~" is a shell feature. Know your shell. If we make an exception for
> --git-dir, we might have to support --blahblah=~/somewhere.

Correct but not entirely true.

When we know --git-dir=<path> must name a path, we should be able to
do better.  See OPT_FILENAME in >parse-optios.h>, for inspiration.

MJG's patch later in this thread is conceptually OK but I do not
think it should introduce a "expand and then setenv" helper that
won't be useful unless the variable is GIT_DIR.  That pattern does
not appear that often, and smells like a bad API design taste.