Hello,
I think I encountered a bug or at least unfortunate behavior in gitk that I noticed the first time with version 2.49.0.
Assume a Linux system. Assume there is a directory /some/dir containing a file named 'git' which is *not* executable. Also assume that the PATH variable contains /some/dir somewhere before the directory that contains the actual git executable. Under these conditions, when gitk is executed within a Git repository, it shows the misleading message "Cannot find a git repository here." It seems that gitk tries to execute /some/dir/git, which fails, because it is not executable. The error message seems to be just a misleading symptom.
Note that, considering the above conditions, my shell (zsh) and the which command both resolve git to the actual git executable ignoring /some/dir/git. I think, also gitk should ignore non-executable files in the PATH. Currently, gitk seems to check just for existence but not for executability (see line 82 [1]).
PS: In case you wonder about a use case where a file named git would end up in the PATH: My PATH looks like PATH=/home/me/overlay:…. For debugging purposes, I sometimes replace/wrap a binary like git by/in a script by putting this script into /home/me/overlay. When I am done with debugging, I often keep the script and just remove the executable bit assuming it is then ignored by the PATH resolution.
[1] https://github.com/git/git/blob/683c54c999c301c2cd6f715c411407c413b1d84e/gitk-git/gitk#L82
[System Info]
git version: git version 2.49.0 cpu: x86_64 built from commit: 683c54c999c301c2cd6f715c411407c413b1d84e sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh libcurl: 8.12.1 OpenSSL: OpenSSL 3.4.1 11 Feb 2025 zlib: 1.3.1 uname: Linux 6.13.8-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun, 23 Mar 2025 17:17:30 +0000 x86_64 compiler info: gnuc: 14.2 libc info: glibc: 2.41 $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /usr/bin/zsh
-- Regards Flupp