Re: [PATCH] allow setting GIT_WORK_TREE to "no work tree"

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Feb 7, 2008, 12:33 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.1.00.0802071231540.8543@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <76718490802062313jdbd0e84xc9f36d703bb86c44@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Jay Soffian wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Feb 7, 2008 12:13 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 12:59:32PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > >
> > > I was tempted to suggest GIT_WORK_TREE=/dev/null because that is
> > > what "diff" uses to mark "this does not even exist", but that
> > > feels dirty.
> >
> > It feels dirty to me, too. I would rather choose something that doesn't
> > even look like a path. I think GIT_WORK_TREE=" " is too ugly, too.
> 
> Is using something like "__GIT_WORK_TREE_NOT_SET__" that terrible?

Yes. First: it looks more like a C constant than a proper environment variable. Second: what to do _sanely_, when both GIT_WORK_TREE and GIT_WORK_TREE_NOT_SET are true?

Of course, you could argue that one should override the other. But the consequence will be user errors that could be prevented, thus it is a design error.

Ciao, Dscho