Re: [RFC/PATCH] Use work tree to determine if it supports symlinks

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 27, 2012, 21:55 UTC
Message-ID: <7vobn0zx5m.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <17699041.7b2cBoDgE0@mephista>

Sascha Cunz <Sascha-ML@babbelbox.org> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> From 3f449e719b924929f1f8ca9b5eff83f17bc64c60 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Sascha Cunz <Sascha@BabbelBox.org>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:54:56 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH] Use work tree to determine if it supports symlinks
>
> When creating a new repository, we check some capabilities of the
> underlying file system(s). We check the file system for its case
> sensitivity and the ability to create symbolic links.
>
> Before this patch the .git-dir was used for this check, while the
> comments in code clearly state to test on the work tree.

That is simply because a layout that has .git and its containing directory (i.e. the working tree) on a separate filesystem when we run "git init" is not supported, and more importantly, we do not want to step outside ".git", which is the simplest and safest way to avoid touching the end-user data that sits in the working tree.

The code comment is about checking the filesystem that houses both the working tree and ".git"; if the user later wants to turn .git into a separate mount point, or if the user wants to use GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE to create a funny layout, the user should know how to muck with ".git/config" to adjust to the peculiarity.