The functions in attr.c do not look at $GIT_WORK_TREE when trying to find the .gitattributes file. Thus if you are not inside the work tree, but have GIT_WORK_TREE set attribute lookup will be wrong. Password Store <http://www.passwordstore.org/> is using this feature when the password store is a git repository. It sets up a diff attribute that decrypts the contents, but that works only if the command is issued while inside the repository. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, schwab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510 2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1 "And now for something completely different."