Re: git 2.9.2: is RUNTIME_PREFIX supposed to work?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 27, 2016, 16:15 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh991qpyn.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1474982294.3190.32.camel@mad-scientist.net>

Paul Smith <paul@mad-scientist.net> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Mon, 2016-09-26 at 14:57 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Paul Smith <paul@mad-scientist.net> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Hi all.  I'm trying to create a relocatable installation of Git 2.9.2,
>> > so I can copy it anywhere and it continues to run without any problem.
>> > This is on GNU/Linux systems, FWIW.
>> 
>> I had an impression that the setting was only to support MS Windows.
>
> Hm.  You may be right.  If so that's too bad, because a relocatable Git
> is very handy even on UNIX systems.  Is there a reason for invoking the
> subcommands by providing the plain command ("fetch", "merge-base") as
> argv[0], rather than giving the fully-qualified path to a Git command?

I do not think of any reason offhand. It just is that we never needed it.

If you want to add support without making the resulting codebase too ugly, without breaking the classic way of installing into a fixed locations, and without breaking the existing support of platforms that does know the runtime-prefix thing, not just I wouldn't mind but I would welcome such an addition ;-)

Thanks.