Re: GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable not working

> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 05:33:47PM -0800, Ron Garret wrote:
> 
> > What am I doing wrong here?
> > 
> > [ron@mickey:~/devel/gittest]$ pwd
> > /Users/ron/devel/gittest
> > [ron@mickey:~/devel/gittest]$ git status
> > # On branch master
> > # Untracked files:
> > #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
> > #
> > #  git/
> > nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to 
> > track)
> > [ron@mickey:~/devel/gittest]$ cd
> > [ron@mickey:~]$ export GIT_WORK_TREE=/Users/ron/devel/gittest
> > [ron@mickey:~]$ git status
> > fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
> > [ron@mickey:~]$ git status --work-tree=/Users/ron/devel/gittest
> > fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
> > [ron@mickey:~]$
> 
> You haven't told git where to find the repository itself. GIT_WORK_TREE
> is about saying "here are my work tree files", but it is explicitly not
> about "here is where my .git directory is". That lets you keep the two
> in totally separate locations. E.g., you could do something like
> tracking /etc, but keep your .git directory in /var.
> 
> For your case above, you would want to also
> 
>   export GIT_DIR=/Users/ron/devel/gittest/.git

> though since you have a fully formed repository, I don't think there is
> really any advantage over just doing:
> 
>   cd /Users/ron/devel/gittest && git $whatever
> 
> though perhaps that is because this is not a real use case, but rather
> just you trying to figure out the feature. :)