>> Glen Choo's commit 6061601d modified Git so that safe.directory could >> be set on the command line using "-c". It seems most sub-commands work >> this way, but not "clone". Here is an example: > > This is because upload-pack, the server half of a fetch/clone, is run as > a separate process which does not accept the client-side "-c" options. > See this email for more details and a workaround: > > https://lore.kernel.org/git/20240529102307.GF1098944@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Thank you, Jeff! This works and makes sense, although I can see how users would be confused by the edge case. For completeness, I investigated how to do the same over SSH. Imagine a repository user-owned by Bob, but group-owned with r/w/x permissions by a group containing Alice. It seems the same trick fails because git-shell rejects the custom upload-pack command: git -c safe.directory="*" clone -u 'git -c safe.directory="*" upload-pack' alice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:/shared/repository Cloning into 'git'... fatal: unrecognized command 'git -c safe.directory="*" upload-pack '/shared/repository'' fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists. I was able to overcome this by creating /home/alice/git-shell-commands/upload-pack-safe, placing the following there #!/bin/sh git -c safe.directory="$1" upload-pack $1 and running: git -c safe.directory="*" clone -u upload-pack-safe alice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:/shared/repository This seems to be another interface edge case. Is my solution reasonable, or is there something else that would be more consistent? Related: Would anyone be interested in working on an academic paper about safe.directory? It seems like people who write Git forge-type software or other collaborative systems based on Git would benefit from a rigorous description of the conditions and operations under which the use of safe.directory is indeed safe. I am not sure I have this worked out in my own mind yet. Something like "Setuid Demystified" from USENIX 2002 might help. -- Mike :wq
