# difftool fails with dangling symlinks, writes to targets outside of the repository

2 messages from 2019-11-22 to 2019-12-02. Participants: Philippe.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/52312

## Philippe, 2019-11-22 12:37

Subject: difftool fails with dangling symlinks, writes to targets outside of the repository
Message-ID: <7e04799d-c03c-ac28-604d-ec4d30029d44@quarantine.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7e04799d-c03c-ac28-604d-ec4d30029d44%40quarantine.de

```
Hi all,


I'm using a git repository for configuration management which contains
several dangling symlinks (which only make sense on the to be deployed
system, fwiw). Now, using git 2.23, I ran into a problem regarding the
difftool, which fails when such a symlink is involved in a changeset.

The best way to describe that problem is probably to provide an example.

> #!/bin/bash
> tmp=$(mktemp -d)
> trap "rm -rf ${tmp}" 0 1 2 15
> 
> set -x
> 
> cd ${tmp}
> git init
> ln -s ../doesnot/exist myfile
> git add myfile ; git commit -m "initial checkin" myfile
> 
> git checkout -b mybranch
> rm -f myfile ; echo "foo" > myfile
> git commit -am "typechange"
> 
> git difftool -d master..mybranch

The last call fails with:

> fatal: could not open '/tmp/git-difftool.2wHaR9/left/myfile' for writing: No such file or directory

Neither specifying "--symlinks" nor "--no-symlinks" resolves that.

Playing around with this issue lead me to another strange behaviour.
Difftool might overwrite symlink targets that are not part of the
repository. Please take a look at the following script:

> #!/bin/bash
> tmp=$(mktemp -d)
> trap "rm -rf ${tmp}" 0 1 2 15
> 
> set -x
> 
> echo "hello world" > /tmp/testfile
> cat /tmp/testfile
> 
> cd ${tmp}
> git init
> ln -s /tmp/testfile myfile
> git add myfile ; git commit -m "initial checkin" myfile
> 
> git checkout -b mybranch
> rm -f myfile ; echo "foo" > myfile
> git commit -am "typechange"
> 
> git difftool -d master..mybranch
> 
> cat /tmp/testfile

Here, difftool overwrites the /tmp/testfile's content "hello world" with
"/tmp/testfile".

Did I run into a bug or is it a layer 8 problem?


Regards,

Philippe

```

## Philippe, 2019-12-02 12:23

Subject: Re: difftool fails with dangling symlinks, writes to targets outside of the repository
Message-ID: <c23d23d8-8a08-9ee7-d148-77b1f4611606@quarantine.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/c23d23d8-8a08-9ee7-d148-77b1f4611606%40quarantine.de
In-Reply-To: <7e04799d-c03c-ac28-604d-ec4d30029d44@quarantine.de>

```
Hi all,

since that "difftool overwrites files outside of the git
repository"-thingy is apparently not considered a bug, could you please
point me to the correct usage of difftool or a workaround?

To recall the situation:
- git repo contains a symlink pointing outside of the repository to a
non-existing file
- that symlink gets replaced by a regular file
- using 'git difftool -d ${oldstate}..${newstate}' overwrites the file
the symlink was pointing to (which might fail if the target is not writable)

Kind regards

Philippe

```