Re: permissions

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 6, 2010, 19:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7vvd9wvswy.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4C0B6C32.1090700@wpursell.net>

William Pursell <bill.pursell@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> The problem is permissions, not that it's "not a git repository".
> The error message should be "permission denied".  The easy solution
> is to abort with "permission denied" whenever that is encountered,
> but the trouble with that is that it breaks the current work flow
> in which a broken dir (or one for which the user lacks
> priveleges) is bypassed and a valid object directory higher
> up in the filesystem tree is used.

I think it is sane to abort with "permission denied", as it is "not a git repository" but it is "we cannot even determine if that .git we see is a git repository, and if it is, then we cannot do any git operation here as we cannot read it". As to what you call "the current work flow", I think it is not like we _support_ such usage, but more like it _happens to_ work that way.

> A related question is: does anyone actually prefer (or rely on) the
> current model in which ../.git is used in the event that .git is borked
> or the user lacks permission?

So my answer to this is "nobody _should_", as it is not even "the current model", but "it happens to behave like that by accident". That doesn't mean there isn't anybody who already does, though...