Re: Dropping core.worktree and GIT_WORK_TREE support

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 08:05:03PM -0700, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Does this include removing of --work-tree as well?

The git backend of Pootle (http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/) uses
it.

Interesting.  Does it use it because it can (meaning, --work-tree is
supposed to work), or because --work-tree is the cleanest way to do what
it wants to do (if the feature worked properly, that is, which is not the
case)?

It's like:

The current working directory is like
/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Pootle. The git repository is under
/some/other/path/outside/usr.

Then Pootle has two possibilities:

1) save the current directory, change to /some/other, execute git, and
change the directory back

2) use git --work-tree / --git-dir

I guess the second form is more elegant. Of course if it is decided that
this option will be removed then the old form can be still used, but I
think that would be a step back.

quoted

Also, here is a question:

$ git --git-dir git/.git --work-tree git diff --stat|tail -n 1
 1443 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 299668 deletions(-)

So, it's like it thinks every file is removed.

But then:

$ cd git
$ git diff --stat|wc -l
0

is this a bug, or a user error?

I  think it is among the many other things that falls into "the two
attempts still haven't resolved" category.

I'm unfamiliar with this part of the codebase, so in case somebody other
could look at it, that would be great, but I'm happy with write a
testcase for it. (Or in case nobody cares, I can try to fix it, but that
may take a bit more time.)