Re: 'git status' is not read-only fs friendly

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Feb 10, 2007, 17:03 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702101154130.1757@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <7vmz3mj6yo.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> writes:
> 
> > On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >
> >> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> writes:
> >> ...
> >> > Because git-status itself is conceptually a read-only operation, and 
> >> > having it barf on a read-only file system is justifiably a bug.
> >> 
> >> I do not 100% agree that it is conceptually a read-only operation.
> >
> > It is.  It's the technical issue that makes it not so.
> 
> I do not think so.  It is a workflow issue that user indicates
> the cache cleanliness information does not matter anymore.

You're making assumption about work flows and using that to justify command implementation flaws. This is not exactly "user friendly".

Show 13 quoted lines

> Is it wrong for "git-status" to be losing the cache cleanliness
> information?  The intended audience of that program is those who
> are about to make a commit in the repository, as they are asking
> "what would I be committing?"  Up to that point, they may have
> cared about the reminder they get from "git diff" that they
> edited a file and then ended up reverting the whole edit they
> did to that file (I find that empty diff from "git diff" often
> very useful, although I felt "Huh?"  when I was new to git).
> But when they ask "git status", they care more about the real
> change, and at that point (since they feel they may be ready to
> make a commit -- and that is the whole point of running
> "git-status") they do want to lose the cache cleanliness
> information.

I don't dispute that. But git-status should certainly not be restricted _only_ to that usage pattern.

> So "git-status" to be read-write application to
> discard the cache-cleanliness information is probably a good
> thing.

It is... when the file system lets you write. Like I said this is a technically good thing to do.

But a command that is called "status" should provide a "status" even if the file system is read-only nevertheless. The index updating business that is done behind the scene is and should be an opportunistic optimization, but it should not prevent status reporting.

It is pretty expected that a "commit" command would fail if the file system is ro, but not a "status" command. And this is true irrespectively of whatever workflow you might be most likely to use the "status" command for.

Nicolas