Re: [PATCH 3/4] submodule--helper list: lose the extra prefix option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 25, 2016, 06:28 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqmvpn5awo.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1458862468-12460-4-git-send-email-sbeller@google.com>

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> The usual early machinery of Git is to change the directory to
> the top level of the working tree and pass the actual path inside
> the working tree as `prefix` to the command being run.
>
> This is the case both for commands written in C (where the
> prefix is passed into the command in a function parameter) as
> well as in git-submodule.sh where the setup code runs...
>
> Adhere to Gits standard of passing the relative path inside the
> working tree by passing it via -C.

While -C _also_ works, I do not think it is "standard" in any sense. What made you think so? -C is a way to tell Git to chdir there before doing anything else, without even adjusting the command line arguments that might be paths, and "chdir there to go to top" may (or may not--I haven't thought things thru) have the same effect as passing the prefix into functions, that is merely true as a side effect, I would think.

So this change may not be wrong per-se, but if the lossage of prefix is the final goal (as opposed to an approach to gain other benefits, e.g. "now we do not have to use prefix, we can simplify these other things"), I do not know if it is worth it.