Re: Cloning into an existing, non-empty directory?

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi again,

Richard Hartmann wrote[1]:

> 1) git merge does not seem to understand either of those parameters.

I assume you mean --work-tree and --git-dir.  But if true, that would
be a bug.

Based on the script, it looks like you are not passing a branch name
to "git merge".  Maybe that is the problem.  In any case, it would be
nice to see what command you used, what result was expected, and what
result actually occured.

Side note: git commands respect the GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE
environment variables in addition to the corresponding command-line
parameters, which can save some typing.

[...]
> 2) running `git pull` as suggested results in:
>
> fatal: /usr/lib/git-core/git-pull cannot be used without a working tree.
>
> which can be worked around by using --work-tree and --git-dir . Not
> ideal, but workeable if I accept the race condition.

Weird.  Maybe chdir-ing into the work tree will help?  (Traditionally,
git commands tend to be run from within the work tree, so I wouldn't
be too surprised if some commands do not like being run from outside.)

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/171920/focus=171934