Re: Bug: git worktree remove and overwritten directory

From: Jonathan Müller <jonathanmueller.dev@gmail.com>
Date: May 20, 2020, 14:28 UTC
Message-ID: <dd7c3a11-6537-74ec-053c-0c9c946c5f19@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAPig+cTU8+N6Chimpoa2_T-TcXxw-3B9-9pjCLz7WeOh472P_A@mail.gmail.com>

On 20.05.20 16:22, Eric Sunshine wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Git tries hard to prevent the same directory from being registered to
> multiple worktrees, however, there is not much it can do to prevent a
> person from shooting himself in the foot by making changes like this
> outside of Git's control. Thus, this seems like a case of "if it
> hurts, don't do it".
>

I agree and didn't expect git to "work".

Show 5 quoted lines

> However, "git worktree" could possibly do a better job of helping you
> recover from such a situation. In particular, I think it should be
> reasonably easy to enhance "git worktree prune" to detect this
> situation and automatically prune the non-main now-bogus worktree
> entry.

At the very least, the somewhat confusing error message could be replaced by a "you messed up the worktrees, please delete the corresponding entry in .git/worktree" or something like that. But enhancing `git worktree prune` would be better. It was, in fact, the first command I ran to try and fix the problem.

Show 6 quoted lines

> It may be possible to special-case "git worktree remove" to detect
> this situation and automatically prune the bogus entry too, but I'm
> quite hesitant to suggest that sort of special case both because the
> implementation would likely be ugly, and it could lead to a plethora
> of additional ugly special-cases as people discover even more ways to
> shoot themselves in the feet.

As said above, I think git worktree remove could issue a better error if it detects multiple worktrees with an identical path.