On 11-01-19 20:24, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Maaartin <grajcar1@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> On 11-01-19 13:42, Jonathan Nieder wrote: >>> Unfortunately the existence of GIT_WORK_TREE makes it tempting to >>> use without setting GIT_DIR. >> >> Maybe I'm asking nonsense, but why should I always use both? On the >> command line, I either cd to my (alternate) working tree and use GIT_DIR >> only or the other way round. > > As long as you were at the root level of these two sets of "working trees", > you don't need GIT_WORK_TREE at all. Actually I did mostly something like git --work-tree /tmp/somewhere checkout somebranch -- . && winmerge . /tmp/somewhere at root of my normal work tree as a poor man's replacement for git difftool somebranch This is probably no good idea as it mixes up the index. Sorry for misusing this thread, but a side question: Should I specify GIT_INDEX_FILE or is there a better way? Btw., I see that GIT_INDEX_FILE is relative to the work tree instead of to the git dir. I find it strange as it's normally a part of the git dir. > We originally had only GIT_DIR and people who wanted to use a working tree > without an embedded .git (hence having to use GIT_DIR) complained that > they cannot work from subdirectories while cd'ing around, because you > declare that you are at the root of your working tree by using GIT_DIR > (naturally, there is no discovery of .git so we won't know where the root > is). GIT_WORK_TREE was added to augment the mechanism to allow them to > specify where their root is, so that they can set both and then chdir > around inside their working tree. That's nice. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html