Re: [PATCH 3/3] Allow whole-tree operations to be started from a subdirectory

[Josef Weidendorfer <Josef.Weidendorfer@gmx.de>]

On Friday 12 January 2007 21:56, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> This updates five commands (merge, pull, rebase, revert and cherry-pick)
> so that they can be started from a subdirectory.
> 
> This may not actually be what we want to do.  These commands are
> inherently whole-tree operations, and an inexperienced user may
> mistakenly expect a "git pull" from a subdirectory would merge
> only the subdirectory the command started from.

Yes, this IMHO is a problem.

Why not add a general "--top" option to the "git" wrapper,
to temporarily let git change to the toplevel while running
the command?

The wish to allow git-fetch from subdirectories is the
inconvenience to have to cd up, and later down. This is
avoided by running "git --top fetch", and theses people
should be happy.

Yet, if the command outputs some relative paths, the
user is very well aware that these paths are from the
toplevel, as he explicitly specified "--top".

Aside from this, the "--top" options sometimes could
be handy even for other git commands.

And when e.g. git fetch is run from a subdirectory, we
could add to the (now better) error message:

You need to run this command from the toplevel of the working tree.
Alternatively, run "git --top ..." to temporary switch to the
toplevel while running the git command.

Josef