Commit 1b77d83cab 'setup_git_directory_gently_1(): resolve symlinks
in ceiling paths' changed the setup code to resolve symlinks in the
entries in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES. Because those entries are
compared textually to the symlink-resolved current directory, an
entry in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES that contained a symlink would have
no effect. It was known that this could cause performance problems
if the symlink resolution *itself* touched slow filesystems, but it
was thought that such use cases would be unlikely. The intention of
the earlier change was to deal with a case when the user has this:
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/home/gitster
but in reality, /home/gitster is a symbolic link to somewhere else,
e.g. /net/machine/home4/gitster. A textual comparison between the
specified value /home/gitster and the location getcwd(3) returns
would not help us, but readlink("/home/gitster") would still be
fast.
After this change was released, Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>
reported:
> [...] my computer has been acting so slow when I’m not connected to
> the network. I put various network filesystem paths in
> $GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES, such as
> /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n/andersk (to avoid hitting its parents
> /afs/athena.mit.edu, /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a, and
> /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n which all live in different AFS
> volumes). Now when I’m not connected to the network, every
> invocation of Git, including the __git_ps1 in my shell prompt, waits
> for AFS to timeout.
To allow users to work around this problem, give them a mechanism to
turn off symlink resolution in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES entries. All
the entries that follow an empty entry will not be checked for symbolic
links and used literally in comparison. E.g. with these:
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=:/foo/bar:/xyzzy or
GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/foo/bar::/xyzzy
we will not readlink("/xyzzy") because it comes after an empty entry.
With the former (but not with the latter), "/foo/bar" comes after an
empty entry, and we will not readlink it, either.
Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The old Git version where it appeared is now useful only to historians,
not to normal users. Also, the text was mentioning only the per-repo
config file, but this is a good place to teach that customization can
also be made per-user.
While at it, remove a now-defunct e-mail from an example.
Signed-off-by: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In the earlier days, we used to spell the name of the system as GIT,
to simulate as if it were typeset with capital G and IT in small
caps. Later we stopped doing so at around 1.6.5 days.
Let's stop doing so throughout the documentation. The name to refer
to the whole system (and the concept it embodies) is "Git"; the
command end-users type is "git". And document this in the coding
guideline.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Ackermann <th.acker@arcor.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We earlier removed a link to list of contributors that pointed to a
defunct page; let's use a working one from Ohloh.net to replace it
instead.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Git takes pathspec arguments in many places to limit the
scope of an operation. These pathspecs are treated not as
literal paths, but as glob patterns that can be fed to
fnmatch. When a user is giving a specific pattern, this is a
nice feature.
However, when programatically providing pathspecs, it can be
a nuisance. For example, to find the latest revision which
modified "$foo", one can use "git rev-list -- $foo". But if
"$foo" contains glob characters (e.g., "f*"), it will
erroneously match more entries than desired. The caller
needs to quote the characters in $foo, and even then, the
results may not be exactly the same as with a literal
pathspec. For instance, the depth checks in
match_pathspec_depth do not kick in if we match via fnmatch.
This patch introduces a global command-line option (i.e.,
one for "git" itself, not for specific commands) to turn
this behavior off. It also has a matching environment
variable, which can make it easier if you are a script or
porcelain interface that is going to issue many such
commands.
This option cannot turn off globbing for particular
pathspecs. That could eventually be done with a ":(noglob)"
magic pathspec prefix. However, that level of granularity is
more cumbersome to use for many cases, and doing ":(noglob)"
right would mean converting the whole codebase to use
"struct pathspec", as the usual "const char **pathspec"
cannot represent extra per-item flags.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Unlike other environment variables (e.g. GIT_WORK_TREE, GIT_NAMESPACE),
the Documentation/git.txt file did not mention that the GIT_DIR
environment variable can also be set using the --git-dir command line
option.
Signed-off-by: Manlio Perillo <manlio.perillo@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
We earlier removed a link to list of contributors that pointed to a
defunct page; let's use a working one from Ohloh.net to replace it
instead.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The linked page has not been showing the promised "more complete
list" for more than 6 months by now, and nobody has resurrected
the list there nor elsewhere since then.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
On a multiuser system where mortals do not have write access to /etc,
the GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM variable is the best tool we have to keep
getting work done when a syntax error or other problem renders
/etc/gitconfig buggy, until the sysadmin sorts the problem out.
Noticed while experimenting with teaching git to error out when
/etc/gitconfig is unreadable.
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The second paragraph in the git(1) description section were meant to
guide people who are not ready to dive into this page away from here.
Referring migrating CVS users to another page before they get
acquainted with Git was somewhat out of place. Move the reference to
the "FURTHER DOCUMENTATION" section and push that section down.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The one at kernel.org has not been updated for quite a while and
can no longer be called "the latest".
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Previously GIT_EDITOR was not listed in git(1) "Environment Variables" section,
which could be very confusing to users. Include it in "other" subsection along
with a link to git-var(1), since that is the page that fully describes all
places where editor can be set and also their preference order.
Also, git-var(1) did not say that hardcoded fallback 'vi' may have been changed
at build time. A user could be puzzled if 'nano' pops up even when none of the
mentioned environment vars or config.editor are set. Clarify this.
Ideally, the build system should be changed to reflect the chosen fallback
editor when creating the man pages. Not sure if that is even possible though.
Signed-off-by: Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) <linux@rodrigosilva.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Junio C Hamano