Re: [PATCH] -C/--chdir command line option

On 2008-10-20, at 06:55, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

quoted

As for -C being superfluous: --git-dir and --work-tree seem to  
support
weird usage patterns (like work tree separate from git-dir), but  
it seems

Hmm. Yeah, thinking about it more, -C is not really superfluous with
respect to those options. You don't want to say "here is the work- 
tree,
and here is the git-dir". You want to say "find the work-tree and
git-dir for me using the usual rules, as if I were in this  
directory."

I think that interpretation of -C, if the option existed, makes  
sense, but
I do not understand why the tool that drives git refuses to chdir to  
the
repository for itself in the first place.

The tool (a) manages many repositories, and I don't want to chdir()  
back and forth, (b) should be able to manage those repositories not  
disturbing anything other.  It comes as a Common Lisp library, which  
will usually be called by end user, but can also be called  
programmatically, and I wouldn't want any library to change my cwd; it  
could chdir() back, of course, but this would still be a race  
condition if other threads were running at the same time.

And there is the Lisp-specific thing, that the language comes from  
before Unix domination, and things as simple as changing the process'  
cwd are actually nontrivial to do portably (there is equivalent of cwd  
inside Lisp world, which is used by Lisp-level file access routines,  
but chdir() is not in ANSI standard, is done differently by every  
implementation, and would require some kind of compatibility layer).

For me, -C would make life much easier, and I gave other arguments for  
it before.  It would suffice if --work-tree worked with "git pull", if  
-C doesn't pass, but it seems to me that -C has some merits.

Regards,
Maciej.

-- 
-><- Maciej Pasternacki -><- http://www.pasternacki.net/ -><-