Re: GIT_DIR vs. --git-dir

From: Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 24, 2012, 07:41 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8DHGtktnvvziA_+Fp6a4VFsE9_=zkWKNBJU7Ro_QO+==A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <5060097F.9050203@drmicha.warpmail.net>

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> [mjg@localhost ~]$ GIT_DIR=~/.githome git rev-parse --show-toplevel
> /home/mjg
>
> [mjg@localhost ~]$ git --git-dir=~/.githome rev-parse --show-toplevel
> fatal: Not a git repository: '~/.githome'
>
> Huh?

The message looks pretty clear to me that ~ is not expanded.

Show 13 quoted lines

> Ok, so most users probably would not try further and blame git, but:
>
> [mjg@localhost ~]$ git --git-dir=/home/mjg/.githome rev-parse
> --show-toplevel
> /home/mjg
>
> (All this is with core.worktree set to /home/mjg.)
>
> So, while I do understand that we don't expand '~' in any of these cases
> and it's only a matter of bash tilde expansion kicking in or not, we
> might want to do something about it. (--git-dir=$HOME/.githome gets
> expanded, as well, and --git-dir=.githome works from the appropriate cwd
> only).

"~" is a shell feature. Know your shell. If we make an exception for --git-dir, we might have to support --blahblah=~/somewhere. That's a lot of changes and we might mistakenly over-expand something. Users running git on cmd.exe may get surprised that "~" is expanded. We could print an advice "did you mean $HOME/.githome?". That could still be a lot of changes, but it's no-op so less worries of breaking something. I prefer doing nothing in this case.

-- 
Duy