On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 01:27:33PM -0500, Jeff King wrote: > On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 10:19:38AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > >> Is this a bug, or is the ability to symlink `.git` just a happy coincidence? > > > > > > It has never been supported. > > > > Oops, hit "send" too early. > > > > We have support for a "gitdir:" facility that would work even on a > > filesystem that cannot do symlinks (see gitrepository-layout(5)), > > and both the higher-level submodule Porcelain and the more recent > > "worktree" experimental code do use it. > > And the way to convince git to make the link for you is with clone's > "--separate-git-dir" option. > > -Peff What's curious is that this doesn't really work either, so the issue doesn't seem to be the lack of symlink support, but rather the lack of willingness on the part of Git to resolve a path recursively. The following works flawlessly: $ mkdir repos $ git init $ mv .git repos/repoA $ printf 'gitdir: repos/repoA\n' >.git $ git submodule add https://github.com/witiko/git-parallel There is, however, a minor pain, which makes the repository unportable: $ cat git-parallel/.git gitdir: /tmp/foobar/repos/repoA/modules/git-parallel When I change the gitdir symlink to a relative path, everything works fine as long as I don't make Git go over two gitdir symlinks: $ sed -i 's#^/tmp/foobar#..#' git-parallel/.git $ git status [works] $ sed -i 's#repos/repoA#.git#' git-parallel/.git $ git status fatal: Not a git repository: git-parallel/../.git/modules/git-parallel Clearly, Git resolves the first gitdir symlink: git-parallel/.git => git-parallel/../.git/modules/git-parallel but refuses to resolve recursively: git-parallel/../.git/modules/git-parallel => git-parallel/../repos/repoA/modules/git-parallel -- 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