Hi, On Sun, 31 Dec 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> writes: > > >> While we're talking about potentially deprecating GIT_DIR for users, > >> out of curiosity, what valid workflows would cause users to want to > >> use GIT_INDEX_FILE and GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY? Seems like they would > >> cause more confusion and support problems than anything else. > > > > Easy, guys. > > > > It is a valid -- indeed, useful -- thing to be able to script nice > > helpers. For example, in one project I track tar balls. So, I wrote a > > script which will unpack the tar ball in a directory, build a new index > > from it, and commit the corresponding tree on top of the tracking branch. > > This setup relies _heavily_ on being able to redirect GIT_INDEX_FILE and > > GIT_DIR. > > I do agree INDEX_FILE and OBJECT_DIRECTORY are handy things for > the user to muck around. What I am not sure about is GIT_DIR, > in the sense that I suspect it is not such a pain to do without > for such a script. Uhm. In the example I illustrated, I need to set GIT_DIR, because I want to commit a new version into a branch of my current repository, but without touching the working tree and the index. Thus, I have to create a temporary directory, unpack the new (upstream) version, set GIT_DIR _and_ GIT_INDEX_FILE, do a write-tree and a commit-tree with some automatic message, and then update the ref. Yes, I could separate the steps, but why make it harder than it needs be? > > ... Now, if somebody starts git in a > > bare repo, where "index" is present, it could die with a helpful message > > like > > > > It seems that this is a bare git repository, but there is an index > > file present, which contradicts that assumption. If the repository > > is indeed bare, please remove the index file. > > That is probably worse. > > * there is no reason for non working-tree operations such as > git-log to fail when you go to a bare repository (or for that > matter .git in a repository with a working-tree). we should > not have to error out nor remove the index we will not use. > > * if you did the above in response to a misguided 'git > checkout' in a bare repository, the next error message the > user will get will be 'huh? you are in a bare repository, > bozo'. > > So I do not think the helpful message should even be necessary. Yeah, I meant this message only to appear when you call a program which needs a working directory. But I agree that this is probably stupid. Ciao, Dscho - 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