Re: [RFC/PATCH v2 1/3] sh-setup: export GIT_DIR

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 23, 2014, 20:18 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqwqefyf3l.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20140423200150.GA31356@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 21 quoted lines

> On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 02:42:38PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>> It is what the clients of this library expect.
>
> Is it? Passing GIT_DIR to sub-invocations of git will change how they
> determine the repo and working tree. Your patch seems to cause failures
> all over the test suite.
>
> Without looking too hard, I'd guess the problems are one of:
>
>   1. Setting GIT_DIR fixes the repo directory for all sub-invocations. A
>      script that does "cd some-other-repo.git && git ...". You'd need to
>      teach calling scripts to unset GIT_DIR when trying to move to
>      another repo.
>
>   2. If GIT_DIR is set but GIT_WORK_TREE is not, then GIT_WORK_TREE will
>      default to ".". It might be sufficient to set GIT_WORK_TREE when
>      you are setting GIT_DIR here. But as I said, I didn't look too
>      hard, so there might be other complications.
>
> -Peff

I do not recall the details but I do remember that it is very deliberate not to export GIT_DIR but only set in git-sh-setup.