Greetings Shourya I am not exactly Johannes (just another GSoC applicant) but here's what I understood from the issue and your thread: > And what exactly do we mean by "built-ins" here(does it refer to the "dashed" commands)? "Built-in" refers to commands implemented in C [1][2]. The more common use of "built-in" which is a command that the shell (bash, sh, ksh) carries out itself [3]. The name draws out the similarity between shell builtins and git builtins, both written in C and executable through the shell. Therefore, "hardlink built-in to the corresponding dashed forms" is to create a hard link with the dashed form name to the C program. > where is the <<libexec/git-core/>> directory? As the makefile suggests, the programs and scripts are installed at `gitexecdir`. I couldn't find it but instead found `GIT_EXEC_PATH` which point to pretty much the same thing. You can find it by `git --exec_path` [4]. > Now, whenever we call scripts whose "dashed" version exists, it will sort of link the "dashed" version as well for I guess historical reasons? ;) No. Creating hard links is done during the build process. But calling `git-<script-name>` through `git <script-name>` makes `git` prepend `libexec/gitcore` which is necessary to find the hard link. So, you are half-right :). Regards Abhishek [1]: https://github.com/msysgit/msysgit/wiki/Why-Is--libexec--so-huge%3F [2]: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/builtin.h [3]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/11465 [4]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Environment-Variables
