Re: Unix root dir as a work tree

["João Carlos Mendes Luís" <jonny@jonny.eng.br>]

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
> 2010/2/8 João Carlos Mendes Luís <jonny@jonny.eng.br>:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>>   Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I could not find any reference.
>>
>>   I have been using CVS as a version control system for unix configuration
>> files for a long time.  I know it has some limitations, and I know git also
>> has its.  But I expect to work around all of them using etckeeper.
>>
>>   The problem is that etckeeper was created with /etc only in mind, and I
>> want to keep track of important files everywhere, not only below /etc (think
>> /opt, /usr/local).  The obvious solution appear to create the repository at
>> the system root, and not at /etc, but it did not work.  I think, because of
>> a bug.
>>
>>  Now, I have a patch that appears to work, but since I am a beginner to git,
>> I don't know if this is the best way to implement it, if it has any side
>> effects, or even if it works for other operating systems (probably they
>> don't even have the bug).  Would any git wizard care to look at it, check if
>> it is ok, and maybe commit in HEAD or give me any advice against my patch?
>>     
>
> How did you set GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE? What command failed?
>   
Did not set any env special variable.  I expect git to find those 
automatically.

Any command which needs a work tree fails.  git-add, git-status, etc.

It thinks that its root is "/.git", instead of "/".  Easy to repeat.

cd /
git init
git add etc/motd        # this works
cd etc
git add resolv.conf    # this does not work without my patch