Andreas Schwab <schwab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > 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. I may be mistaken (I do not have the code in front of me right now) but IIRC after the setup.c code runs (which happens quite early in the sequence that starts from git.c::cmd_main()), the Git process moves to the top level of the working tree, and at that point there is no reason to pay attention to $GIT_WORK_TREE or other mechanisms that places the working tree at a non-standard location, because the attributes (or any in-tree files like .gitignore or .gitmodules) will be found relative to the current working directory no matter what. Did we break that recently?