What's a "work tree"?

I'm trying to figure out what a "work tree" is. as in --work-tree. This is a new command right, the tutorials I've read don't have it. The man page has the syntax but I don't know what it's for.

$ cd /www/mysitedocroot $ git --git-dir /gitdir/mysitegit/ add . fatal: add must be run in a work tree

thanks

On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 02:09:33PM -0500, Mike wrote:

The work tree is the place where your checked out files reside. E.g., in an ordinary repo (made with "git init" or "git clone") everything that isn't in the .git directory.

You are using --git-dir to point to a repository directory that isn't ".git". That's OK, and it will generally assume that your current directory is the work tree. E.g., this works:

  mkdir repo && cd repo
  git init
  mv .git mygitdir
  touch file
  git --git-dir=mygitdir add file

However, there is a config option "core.bare" which indicates that a repository is "bare", meaning that it has no work tree (and that is presumably what's happening in your example). So you could use --work-tree=. to override that in your example (though you might just be better off setting config.bare to false).

The more probable use case for --work-tree is something like

  $ cd /gitdir/mysitegit
  $ git --work-tree=/www/mysitedocroot add .

i.e., you are in the git dir, so you specify the work tree rather than the other way around. You could even do this:

  $ cd /some/other/directory
  $ git --git-dir=/gitdir/mysitegit --work-tree=/www/mysitedocroot add .

although I'm not sure it's that useful.

-Peff

Jeff King wrote:

Yes, thanks, I was actually following this tutorial:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/cvs-migration.html

Which is how I ended up with a "bare" git dir. Which actually I think I'm ok with, seems to work ok.

For others with the same questions, here's how I found what work-tree means last night:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/glossary.html

I think I got there through the git wiki.

Also- I found out I needed a newish version of git to get the --work-tree argument. The CentOS repos have an older version, 1.2.something.

thanks

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 03:54:55PM -0500, Mike wrote:

Ah, OK. The normal use case would then be to clone that bare repository (though you seem to be directly exposing the work tree with the webserver, so you may not want to have the .git directory there -- there was a long-ish thread about that a week or two ago).

Yes, that is ancient in git terms (in particular, pre-1.5.x has a number of interface differences). The work-tree option was added in 1.5.3.

-Peff