Subject: Q about git rev-parse {--is-inside-work-tree, --show-cdup}

From: Dirk Süsserott <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2010 22:06:36 +0100

Hi together,

I wrote some shell scripts that do sth with my git repositories. I place
my scripts in my ~/bin folder (not in the repo). So the first step in my
scripts is always to check whether they get called from whithin a git
repo and bail out if they don't.

I do this like so:

---------------------
if [ "$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree)" = "true" ] # (1)
then
      here=$(pwd)
      cdup=$(git rev-parse --show-cdup);    # (2a)
      cdup=${cdup:-"."}                     # (2b)
      cd $cdup                              # (2c)

      [do sth useful from the topdir]

      cd $here
      exit 0;
else
      echo "Not inside a git working tree."
      exit 1;
fi
---------------------

I have two questions:

1. Wouldn't it be useful, if "git rev-parse" (1) had an option "-q" that
simply indicates whether "--is-inside-work-tree" is true by means of the
return code? Actually it has an option "-q" but that doesn't work with
"--is-inside-work-tree".

2. Wouldn't it be useful, if "git rev-parse --show-cdup" (2a) would
return a dot "." instead of nothing if we are already in the topdir?
That would make the steps (2a), (2b), (2c) to a simple "cd $(git
rev-parse --show-cdup)".

(For those who aren't familiar with shell programming: (2b) means: 'if
$cdup is empty, then set it to "."'.)

I know that 2. is a problem, because "git rev-parse" is a plumbing tool.
People likely rely on "--show-dup" to return an empty string. But what
about 1.? I think there's no harm if "-q" would work for
"--is-inside-work-tree" as well.

BTW: I'm sorry that all my sentences start with "I". ;-)

What do you think? If appreciated, I'd like to work on a patch for (1).

Cheers,
     Dirk