threads / discuss / 57619

Path differences between git status & git status --porcelain

Subject: Path differences between git status & git status --porcelain

## tl;dr

3 messages between Mar 26, 2022 and Mar 27, 2022.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

Tone Kastlunger· Mar 26, 2022, 09:25 UTC · lore

Hello; we have noticed that the results displayed by git status & git status --porcelain differ in the path information shown. For instance, in one of our test repos:

"git status" output from a "<gitreporoot>/test" folder:

  Changes not staged for commit:
    (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
    (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

  modified:   ../src/api/db.py  <---- Notice the ".." correctly
displaying the relative path
       to the (modified) file

"git status --porcelain"  output from the same location:

    ....cutted stuff to keep things clean...
       M src/api/db.py   <---- Notice the missing ".." in front of the
(modified) file path.

Is this intentional/expected behaviour; and if not, we were wondering if this is a known issue?

Best, Tone Kastlunger Giulietta SW

Junio C Hamano· Mar 27, 2022, 00:47 UTC · re: Tone Kastlunger · lore

Re: Path differences between git status & git status --porcelain

Tone Kastlunger <users.giulietta@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> "git status --porcelain"  output from the same location:
>
>     ....cutted stuff to keep things clean...
>        M src/api/db.py   <---- Notice the missing ".." in front of the
> (modified) file path.
>
> Is this intentional/expected behaviour; and if not, we were wondering
> if this is a known issue?

Yes, this is working as designed and any future versions of Git will not change it. Scripts can forever rely on the fact that it can get paths relative to the root of the working tree regardless of where in the working tree they start.

You can add this:

    [status]
	relativepaths=no

to your ~/.gitconfig and "git status" (without --porcelain option) will also show paths relative to the root of the working tree (i.e. without ugly ../ prefix).

We made --porcelain=v2 to get affected by the status.relativepaths configuration, which may probably have been a mistake, but that is also too late to fix now. It defaults to show paths relative to the directory the command happened to be run, and in order to get a reliable output, the calling script must override status.relativepaths configuration variable the end-user may have, e.g.

    git -c status.relativepaths=no status --porcelain=v2

Tone Kastlunger· Mar 27, 2022, 16:06 UTC · re: Junio C Hamano · lore

Re: Path differences between git status & git status --porcelain

Oh Sorry, the --porcelain=v2 went by unnoticed (not mentioned in the docs).

Thanks for the clarification! Best, tk

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 2:47 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 39 quoted lines

>
> Tone Kastlunger <users.giulietta@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > "git status --porcelain"  output from the same location:
> >
> >     ....cutted stuff to keep things clean...
> >        M src/api/db.py   <---- Notice the missing ".." in front of the
> > (modified) file path.
> >
> > Is this intentional/expected behaviour; and if not, we were wondering
> > if this is a known issue?
>
> Yes, this is working as designed and any future versions of Git will
> not change it.  Scripts can forever rely on the fact that it can get
> paths relative to the root of the working tree regardless of where
> in the working tree they start.
>
> You can add this:
>
>     [status]
>         relativepaths=no
>
> to your ~/.gitconfig and "git status" (without --porcelain option)
> will also show paths relative to the root of the working tree
> (i.e. without ugly ../ prefix).
>
> We made --porcelain=v2 to get affected by the status.relativepaths
> configuration, which may probably have been a mistake, but that is
> also too late to fix now.  It defaults to show paths relative to the
> directory the command happened to be run, and in order to get a
> reliable output, the calling script must override status.relativepaths
> configuration variable the end-user may have, e.g.
>
>     git -c status.relativepaths=no status --porcelain=v2
>
>
>
>
>