From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:32:27 GMT
Subject: Re: [BUG] git --work-tree=... status
Message-ID: <7vlkcgim5w.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20070812185855.GA16704@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>

Uwe Kleine-König  <ukleinek@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> The problem seems to be that require_work_tree demands more that I think
> it should.  It calls `git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree`.

I think the semantics of require_work_tree is (currently and has
been) indeed "you are supposed to be inside the work tree".

"git-status $args" is a "git commit --dry-run $args" and $args
are often filenames relative to $cwd that name paths to include
in the partial commit, so for this particular case I think it is
understandable that it wants you to be _IN_ the work tree.

You can propose alternative semantics to "git status" that is
defined as "cd_to_toplevel && git diff --cached && git diff"
that does not care any of the $args, and I personally am open to
such a departure from "commit --dry-run" semantics, which have
been there since 1.4.0 days.  But that is a huge user level
semantics change, and will not belong to the 1.5.X series.