Re: [External] Document ability to disable template directory in git-init

From: Han Young <hanyang.tony@bytedance.com>
Date: Jul 4, 2025, 02:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAG1j3zEiD341X-_ZdR2puaEmZZ0ZBWSmyboyyGZaDXcDTcmAeA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <boris.20250703161436@codesynthesis.com>

On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 10:51 PM Boris Kolpackov <boris@codesynthesis.com> wrote:

> Looking at the code, this undocumented (AFAICS) behavior appears to
> be there at least from git 2.1:

Digging through the changelog, I think the feature is added in v1.5.6.4:

 "git init --template=" with blank "template" parameter linked files
 under root directories to .git, which was a total nonsense.  Instead, it
 means "I do not want to use anything from the template directory".

Show 6 quoted lines

> I would like to suggest that we document this behavior so that it can
> be relied upon. The motivation for omitting the default template are
> repositories created by tools, such as package managers, for the sole
> purpose of fetching some information from remotes. In this case all
> the stuff copied from the template (such as hooks) is an unnecessary
> waste of time and space.

I've seen some package managers pass "--template=" to git-clone, I'd say this is a widely used undocumented feature :P Document the behavior would help people understand the existing usages of --template=

Thanks.