From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 10:59:51 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/8] Make C-level operable from subdirectories
Message-ID: <7vzmnr1xp4.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <7voe477n4i.fsf_-_@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> writes:

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:
>
>> On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>>
>>> I once advocated for an environment to name the top of working
>>> tree directory --- it might make sense to resurrect that one.
>>
>> Please don't. 
>>
>> We should just make the scripts do it automatically instead.
>
> Here comes an 8-patch series.
>
>   [PATCH 1/8] git-apply: work from subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 2/8] peek-remote: honor proxy config even from subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 3/8] fsck-objects: work from subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 4/8] checkout-index: work from subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 5/8] hash-object: work within subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 6/8] ls-tree: work from subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 7/8] Make networking commands to work from a subdirectory.
>   [PATCH 8/8] Make the rest of commands work from a subdirectory.

In case it was not obvious,...

I think your GIT_DIR=`git-rev-parse --git-dir` patch would make
things work better on top of these changes, while making many of
them silently do funny things as you warned.

For example, among the ones I mentioned in my previous message:

 - git-checkout with or without -b to switch branches work.
   This is because "git-read-tree -u" is not constrained by the
   current directory and operates on the whole working tree.

 - git-checkout <ent> <path>... works as expected.  It takes cwd
   relative paths and updates the index and working tree for
   only specified paths from the named ent.

 - git-checkout -f works in a confusing way; only the files
   under the current directory is updated.  This is because
   "git-checkout-index -a" behaves that way.  git-checkout -f to
   revert to the current HEAD is probably good to work this way,
   but doing this while switching branches is too confusing.

 - git-reset --hard also works in a funny way.  It leaves paths
   outside the current directory intact, because ls-tree reports
   only the files in the current directory while ls-files
   reports all.

 - git-prune works.  git-tag works as before.

It could be argued that it was a mistake that [PATCH 4/8] and
[PATCH 6/8] changed checkout-index and ls-tree to limit their
scope to the current directory, but that is consistent with what
rev-list (log and whatchanged) and diff do, and might be
debatably useful.  Which suggests that things like git-checkout
and git-reset whose normal mode of operation should be
whole-tree should chdir up and do the path prefixing to convert
original cwd relative paths to repository relative.