Re: [PATCH] git rev-parse: Fix --show-cdup inside symlinked directory

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jul 15, 2008, 15:19 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0807151614510.8950@racer>
In-Reply-To: <20080715145920.13529.25603.stgit@localhost>

Hi,

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Petr Baudis wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Consider the scenario when someone makes a symlink into a working tree
> subdirectory at an unrelated place, then attempts to work inside the
> symlinked directory. The scenario is a bit unwieldly, but most of
> the Git will handle it fine - except git rev-parse --show-cdup. That
> will output a sequence of ../ which will work wrong inside the symlink
> using shell cd builtin.

Short version: do not use symlinks in the working directory, if you do not want to track the _symlink_.

Long version: there are a lot of problems with that, and --show-cdup is the least of the problems. A checkout, for example, is able to kill the symlink and check out a fresh copy of the subdirectory.

AFAICT this is a concious decision: If you want to track a symlink, track a symlink, but if you want to track a subdirectory, you will have to track a subdirectory, and it cannot be a symlink.

> This patch changes --show-cdup to always show absolute workdir path
> instead. I think this should hopefully cause no compatibility problems;
> the testsuite is passing fine, at least.

See the thread where I proposed a change like this, back with the infamous worktree desaster, and Junio NACKed; or the thread where Linus rightfully insists that git_dir should be relative if possible, for performance reasons.

Hth, Dscho