On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> The replacement works fine in all tests except for the recursive >> tests as then the chdir is an important detail. In the submodule >> there is no $wt_prefix (as it is the parents' wt_prefix we passed in), > > So the real reason is that we may tweak $wt_prefix to refer to a > non-existing directory, that submodule--helper is buggy and does not > notice it, and that using "-C $wt_prefix" would catch it because it > first tries to chdir to it. I agree that we tweak wt_prefix to refer to an existing path. However I would claim that it's git-submodule.sh which is buggy, not the submodule--helper, because the shell script gives the non-extistent path to submodule--helper in the first place. "-C $wt_prefix" would catch it indeed, so we need to fix that before we switch to -C (if at all) > > The calling script "git submodule" first sets $wt_prefix to the > original directory, so there is no way chdir'ing back there would > not work, right, > but if we update it (e.g. by appending a path to a > submodule we want to work in), it may very well end up referring to > a directory that does not exist (e.g. it may not have been > "init"ed). Is that what is going on? Or by changing dirs in the shell script, i.e. wt_prefix=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel) # wt_prefix is correct until we do: cd sm_path # If we now would "chdir'ing back there", we try to (in $sm_path) > cd ./$wt_prefix # which would be $sm_path/$wt_prefix and that may not exists. > > If that is the case, it makes a lot more sense as an explanation. > The justification for the main change 4/5 in the log message, > i.e. "-C $wt_prefix" is more familiar, was an irrelevant subjective > statement that only said "we could change it to use -C" without > explaining why "--prefix $wt_prefix" was wrong, and that was why I > was unhappy about it. > >> So here is the example from before: >> repo/ # a superproject repository >> repo/untracked/ # an untracked dir in repo/ >> repo/sub/ # a submodule >> repo/sub/subsub # a submodule of a submodule >> >> When calling "git submodule <cmd> --recursive" from within >> repo/untracked/, the recursed instance will end up in >> repo/sub/ with the parents prefix ("untracked/") >> >> In case of git -C $wt_prefix we would try to chdir into >> repo/sub/untracked/ which doesn't exist and our journey ends here. > > That sounds like an unrelated bug, though. It is the thing described above. > Whether -C or --prefix > is used, we shouldn't be using "repo/sub/untracked" after going to > "repo/sub". If the <cmd> somehow wanted to refer to a relative path > (e.g. "file") in the original directory, it should be using > ../untracked as the base (e.g. it would use "../untracked/file"). In case of --prefix we do not chdir into "repo/sub/untracked"; however we have cwd="repo/sub/" and wt_prefix=untracked (as it's stale from the parent). We have no way of knowing where "untracked/" applies to. As the root of the repository is now "repo/sub/" (It is a different repo, the submodule), we may assume there is a "repo/sub/untracked/", but we never compute that value or chdir there. It's just cwd and wt_prefix being from different repositories. (superproject&submodule) > > Of course by using -C, you might notice that repo/sub/untracked does > not exist, but that is not a proper error checking---what if the > submodule at repo/sub does have a directory with that name? IOW, > the computation that gave repo/sub/untracked instead of ../untracked > is wrong and using -C would not make it right. There is no explicit computation of repo/sub/untracked, but it would happen implicitely in the -C case as we'd be in the repo/sub and try to chdir to 'untracked' (interpreted as a relative path) > > And if you clear the prefix you originally obtained in calling > script "git submodule", which is "untracked/", even if <cmd> somehow > wanted to refer to the "file" in that directory, the only clue to do > so is forever lost. Again, this is unrelated to -C/--prefix, but > that is what the patch 2 in the original series (which was rolled > into patch 1 in the update) was about. As of now this file would also be lost I would assume, as it is unclear which repository you refer to. If you are in the "subsub" submodule and know that the $wt_prefix=untracked, you still don't know if the original command was invoked from the root super project or the intermediate submodule. In the current situation you /may/ be able to reconstruct that by going back "prefix" as that seems to be the path we traveled so far. > > So I am not sure what the value of using -C is. At least that > "example from before" does not serve as a good justification. > -- 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