On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 8:08 PM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The attributes system may sometimes read in-tree files from
> the filesystem, and sometimes from the index. In the latter
> case, we do not resolve symbolic links (and are not likely
> to ever start doing so). Let's open filesystem links with
> O_NOFOLLOW so that the two cases behave consistently.
This sounds backward to me. The major use case is reading
.gitattributes on worktree, which follows symlinks so far. Only
git-archive has a special need to read index-only versions. The
worktree behavior should influence the in-index one, not the other way
around. If we could die("BUG" when git-archive is used on symlinks
(without --worktree-attributes). If people are annoyed by it, they can
implement symlink folllowing (to another version in index, not on
worktree).
The story is similar for .gitignore where in-index version is merely
an optimization. If it's symlinks and we can't follow, we should fall
back to worktree version.
--
Duy