git-archive --worktree-attributes (1.8.2)

Hi,

 In the help for git-archive it states:

       --worktree-attributes
           Look for attributes in .gitattributes in working directory too.

This doesn't seem to be the case. I have a use case where I need to archive a remote I don't have write access too (via --remote=), and I wish to ignore certain paths. When I chdir to a temp dir, create a .gitattributes file, and call git archive --worktree-attributes, the bevaviour I see is that it is ignoring .gitattributes. I've tried setting GIT_WORK_TREE to my temp dir, without success. Is the documentation wrong about 'working directory'? Did it mean to say 'working tree'? Looking at the source for archive.c, it seems to assume a GIT_WORK_TREE.

Would you accept a patch that either adds an option to explicitly set the .gitattributes file or would let --worktree-attributes look in $PWD.

Thanks, Amit

Amit Bakshi <ambakshi@gmail.com> writes:

The worktree-attributes should read from the worktree. It should not pay any attention to where you are in the directory hierarchy, i.e. your current working directory (aka $cwd).

The former, possibly, if accompanied with a good justification and implemented cleanly.

The latter, definitely not.

Make it a bit clearer that --worktree-attributes is about files in the working tree (checked out files, possibly changed) and not the current working directory ($PDW). Link to the ATTRIBUTES section, which has more details.

Reported-by: Amit Bakshi <ambakshi@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
---
Does this help a bit?

 Documentation/git-archive.txt | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:49 PM, René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx> wrote:

s/PDW/PWD/

René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx> writes:

I personally thought that the original was already clear enough (especially when taken in the context of Git), but the new wording is not too verbose and should help avoiding misinterpretation.

Thanks.