As reported in https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/3688, calling git fetch -h outside a repository now results in a very ugly BUG: repo-settings.c:23: Cannot add settings for uninitialized repository The reason is that the prepare_repo_settings() calls (that we introduced to support sparse index) assume that there is a gitdir, but the hack to allow parse_options() to handle -h even outside a repository invalidates that assumption. One strategy I considered was to move the prepare_repo_settings() calls after parse_options(). This would work because when parse_options() handles -h, it exits without returning. However, this strategy failed in my tests because e.g. cmd_unpack_objects() does need the pack_use_sparse to be populated correctly before even parsing the options so that it can be overridden via --sparse/--no-sparse. Hence the current strategy where the code that prepares the repo settings and then accesses them is guarded behind the condition that we must have a gitdir to do so. Note: There are other instances where prepare_repo_settings() is called before parse_options(), e.g. in cmd_status(), in seen there are even more instances (e.g. cmd_checkout_index()). All of those instances that are not touched by this here patch do have special code to handle -h early, though, before calling prepare_repo_settings() let alone parse_options(). Johannes Schindelin (2): checkout/fetch/pull/pack-objects: allow `-h` outside a repository t0012: verify that built-ins handle `-h` even without gitdir builtin/checkout.c | 7 ++++--- builtin/fetch.c | 7 +++++-- builtin/pack-objects.c | 8 +++++--- builtin/pull.c | 6 ++++-- t/t0012-help.sh | 7 ++++++- 5 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) base-commit: 4c53a8c20f8984adb226293a3ffd7b88c3f4ac1a Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-1139%2Fdscho%2Fprepare_repo_settings-after-parse_options-v1 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-1139/dscho/prepare_repo_settings-after-parse_options-v1 Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/1139 -- gitgitgadget
