When expanding an alias in a subdirectory, we setup the git_dir (gently), read the config, and then restore the "env" (e.g. the current working directory) so that the command specified by the alias can run correctly. What we failed to reset was the git_dir, meaning that in the most common case, it was now pointing to a .git/ directory *in the subdirectory*. This problem was identified in the GVFS fork, where a pre-command hook was introduced to allow pre-fetching missing blobs. An early quick fix in the GVFS fork simply built on top of the save_env_before_alias() hack, introducing another hack that saves the git_dir and restores it after an alias is expanded: https://github.com/Microsoft/git/commit/2d859ba3b That is very hacky, though, and it is much better (although much more involved, too) to fix this "properly", i.e. by replacing the ugly save/restore logic by simply using the early config code path. However, aliases are strange beasts. When an alias refers to a single Git command (originally the sole intention of aliases), the current working directory is restored to what it had been before expanding the alias. But when an alias starts with an exclamation point, i.e. referring to a command-line to be interpreted by the shell, the current working directory is no longer in the subdirectory but instead in the worktree's top-level directory. This is even true for worktrees added by `git worktree add`. But when we are inside the .git/ directory, the current working directory is *restored* to the subdirectory inside the .git/ directory. In short, the logic is a bit complicated what is the expected current working directory after expanding an alias and before actually running it. That is why this patch series had to expand the signature of the early config machinery to return the additional information for aliases' benefit. Johannes Schindelin (9): discover_git_directory(): avoid setting invalid git_dir config: report correct line number upon error help: use early config when autocorrecting aliases read_early_config(): optionally return the worktree's top-level directory t1308: relax the test verifying that empty alias values are disallowed t7006: demonstrate a problem with aliases in subdirectories alias_lookup(): optionally return top-level directory Use the early config machinery to expand aliases TODO: alias.c | 33 +++++++++++++++++++++------- builtin/help.c | 2 +- cache.h | 7 +++--- config.c | 7 +++--- git.c | 59 ++++++-------------------------------------------- help.c | 2 +- pager.c | 4 ++-- setup.c | 13 +++++++++-- t/helper/test-config.c | 2 +- t/t1308-config-set.sh | 4 +++- t/t7006-pager.sh | 11 ++++++++++ 11 files changed, 70 insertions(+), 74 deletions(-) base-commit: 8d1b10321b20bd2a73a5b561cfc3cf2e8051b70b Published-As: https://github.com/dscho/git/releases/tag/alias-early-config-v1 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/dscho/git alias-early-config-v1 -- 2.13.0.windows.1.460.g13f583bedb5