Re: exec-path behavior

From: Sean Estabrooks <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
Date: Jul 30, 2009, 17:48 UTC
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP449412ED39DA595CF1527AAE130@phx.gbl>
In-Reply-To: <4389ce950907301000m5b264771jf87cc06398bee7e0@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:00:29 -0500 Jeffrey Middleton <jefromi@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm wondering about the intended behavior of the
> --exec-path/GIT_EXEC_PATH option - is it supposed to override or add
> to the built-in path?  It seems to do some of both.

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> There are plenty of commands in each category, and it's not
> immediately obvious to me what criteria separate them.  Not a huge
> problem, since it's easy enough to use --exec-path=foo:<normal-path>,
> but I was in the process of adding support for exec-path to the bash
> completion, and it's an important distinction there - and much easier
> if it adds to the built-in, of course.

Jeffrey,

The commands that are "built-in" and compiled into the git executable will execute because no searching of the exec-path is necessary. Any commands that are compiled into a separate executable will fail since git can not find them in the incorrect exec-path directory.

If you take a listing of the exec-path directory on your system you'll see that many commands are hard-linked to the single "git" executable. The commands that aren't linked to git are external and will be those that fail when you supply an erroneous exec-path.

Sean