RE: What's the ".git/gitdir" file?

["Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

-----Original Message-----
On Tue, October-27-15 6:23 PM, Stefan Beller wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com> wrote:
>> When a ".git" file points to another repo, a ".git/gitdir" file is 
>> created in that repo.
>>
>> For example, running
>>
>>     $ mkdir repo-a repo-b
>>     $ cd repo-a
>>     $ git init
>>     $ cd ../repo-b
>>     $ echo "gitdir: ../repo-a/.git" > .git
>>     $ git status
>>
>> results in a file "repo-a/.git/gitdir" that contains
>>
>>     $ cat repo-a/.git/gitdir
>>     .git
>>
>> I don't see this file mentioned in the gitrepository-layout manpage, 
>> and my searches haven't turned up any information on it.  What's the 
>> purpose of ".git/gitdir"?  Are there cases where it will contain 
>> something other than ".git"?
>
>It's designed for submodules to work IIUC.
>
>Back in the day each git submodule had its own .git directory keeping its local >objects.

>Nowadays the repository of submodule <name> is kept in the superprojects >.git/modules/<name> directory.

Slightly OT: Is there any way of avoiding having that file in the first place? I'm hoping to have a git repository in a normal file system (Posix) and a working area in a rather less-than-normal one where dots in file names are bad (actually a dot is a separator).

Cheers,
Randall