Re: [PATCH 3/3] Teach "git branch" about --new-workdir

From: Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk>
Date: Jul 24, 2007, 12:06 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0707241252040.28577@reaper.quantumfyre.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <46A5DF1F.2030307@trolltech.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

>>  I do not know this is an appropriate itch to scratch for a Windows
>>  developer to begin with.  The new-workdir setting *is* about
>>  symlinked .git/ metainfo space.  If somebody wants to work on a
>>  filesystem without symlink, he should not be using new-workdir but
>>  something else.  E.g. GIT_DIR + GIT_WORK_TREE, or perhaps GIT_DIR +
>>  core.worktree comes to mind.
>
> That's is definitely an option, though it seems to me that its more like 
> giving up than a finding a proper solution. In any case, it would result in 
> two completely different workflows on systems with and without symlink 
> support. I work on both, and would like my workflow to be consistent. Of 
> course I could easily add my own scripts on top to achieve this, but then 
> we're going back into h4x0r land and not making Git more 'available'.
>
> The new-workdir feature doesn't *have* to be about symlinked .git/ metainfo 
> space, but could also be about symref'ed .git/ metainfo.
> (A discussion was done in 2005s "Getting rid of symlinks in .git?", but the 
> conclusion was that it would slow it down too much? *ponder*)

Symref'ed isn't really the right term ... we're not talking about refs here. You would have to basically implement symlinks _inside_ git ...

New-workdir really _is_ all about symlinks. It already exists as a contrib feature - and moving it into core is (as I understand it) really just moving it, not redesigning.

If you were going to avoid symlinks, then probably the cleanest way would be to have an explict way to point at the actual repo - rather than making the working look like a repo if you squint hard enough. Which sounds rather like it would be an extension to GIT_DIR + GIT_WORK_TREE. I haven't looked at it, but it shouldn't be too hard to have a mechanism that automatically does GIT_DIR=<there> GIT_WORK_TREE==<here> when the appropriate setup is in place? Though you would have to get it into all the appropriate places ...

-- 
Julian

  ---
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