Cannot rewrite branch(es) with a dirty working directory

Hi All,

I get a spurious: "Cannot rewrite branch(es) with a dirty working directory." trying to filter-branch in a clean git repo (having done a reset). The error disappears when I do git status.

Log of the shell commands: bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33083> mkdir org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.ia64 bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33084> cp -r ../../../CDT_HEAD_GIT/org.eclipse.cdt/.git org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.ia64/ bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33085> cd org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.ia64/ mbash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33086> git reset --hard Checking out files: 100% (11879/11879), done. HEAD is now at a03d454 Build against a local mirror of the 3.7 p2 repo bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33087> git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter core/org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.ia64 -- master Cannot rewrite branch(es) with a dirty working directory. bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33088> git status # On branch master nothing to commit (working directory clean) bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33089> git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter core/org.eclipse.cdt.core.linux.ia64 -- master Rewrite d7092b12c93925f6f7c4725a5abc72e55650621c (16/16) Ref 'refs/heads/master' was rewritten bash:jamesb:xl-cbga-20:33090> git --version git version 1.7.3.2

Is there a particular reason why filter-branch thinks the tree is dirty, and status magically fixes this?

Cheers, James

James Blackburn <jamesblackburn@gmail.com> writes:

No idea. It comes after a "git reset --hard", so it's supposed to be clean.

The index is considered dirty if the stat information (timestamp) is different. "git status" updates the stat-cache to consider unmodified content as up-to-date. So, it's normal that a "git status" repairs the dirty index.

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 07:14:30PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

I wonder if there are racily clean entries[1] in the index, and diff-index reports them as potential changes.

At any rate, filter-branch should probably be refreshing the index before checking for dirtiness, which would give the correct answer either way.

-Peff

[1] See Documentation/technical/racy-git.txt for more information.

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 05:50:03PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

Actually, we've already factored this logic out, so let's use it.

-- >8 --
Subject: filter-branch: use require_clean_work_tree

Filter-branch already requires that we have a clean work tree before starting. However, it failed to refresh the index before checking, which means it could be wrong in the case of stat-dirtiness.

Instead of simply adding a call to refresh the index, let's switch to using the require_clean_work_tree function provided by git-sh-setup. It does exactly what we want, and with fewer lines of code and more specific output messages.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 git-filter-branch.sh |    4 +---
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Sounds good, yes.