Re: [PATCH] git-init: treat option `--bare'

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 29, 2008, 00:55 UTC
Message-ID: <7vzlqaq67h.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080528185357.GB4431@bit.office.eurotux.com>

Luciano Rocha <luciano@eurotux.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Currently, passing the `--bare' option to git-init proper doesn't work, and
> gives no indication that `git --bare init' would work instead:
>
> $ git init --bare
> usage: git-init [-q | --quiet] [--template=<template-directory>] [--shared]
>
> Treat the `--bare' option internally in builtin-init-db.
>
> Also, fix the usage string, synchronising it with the synopsis in the
> documentation.
>
> Signed-off-by: Luciano Rocha <strange@nsk.pt>

It could be argued that this kind of "special casing to help common mistake situation" would in the long run hamper the new users in understanding what --bare means, because one who uses "git init --bare" will not realize that --bare is an option to "git" potty in general and can be given when invoking other git commands. On the other hand, many commands do work sensibly inside a bare repository already, and "init" is truly special in that it cannot inspect the surroundings to guess if the user wants to create a bare repository or one with a work-tree because there isn't a repository yet. In that sense, probably people not learning "git --bare" is not such a loss after all.

In general, I am not particularly fond of this kind of special casing, but initializing a bare repository would be a common enough operation that I personally think it is probably Ok to take this as an exception.

Opinions?  Breakages?