Re: Dropping core.worktree and GIT_WORK_TREE support

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 25, 2008, 21:21 UTC
Message-ID: <7vk5e4g58t.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080825125205.GB23800@genesis.frugalware.org>

Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org> writes:

Show 18 quoted lines

> On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 08:05:03PM -0700, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> > Does this include removing of --work-tree as well?
>> >
>> > The git backend of Pootle (http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/) uses
>> > it.
>> 
>> Interesting.  Does it use it because it can (meaning, --work-tree is
>> supposed to work), or because --work-tree is the cleanest way to do what
>> it wants to do (if the feature worked properly, that is, which is not the
>> case)?
>
> It's like:
>
> The current working directory is like
> /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Pootle. The git repository is under
> /some/other/path/outside/usr.
>
> Then Pootle has two possibilities:

The real question was about if/why that git repository _has to be_ outside of /usr/lib/*/Pootle/. Is that because --work-tree, if worked properly, would have allowed it to be, or is that because for some external reason you are not allowed to have .git under /usr/lib/*/Pootle/ directory?

If the latter, that shows the real requirement to keep supporting it as a feature, and issues around it need to be fixed. Otherwise, i.e. if it does not require use of --work-tree but it uses it only because it could, that gives us less incentive to keep --work-tree as a feature.

I haven't read the breakage and fix around diff in this thread yet, but I will when I get home.

Thanks to both Nguyen and you for trying to salvage --work-tree support.