Subject: Re: [RFC] setup: fail if .git is not a file or directory

From: "brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2026 23:03:18 +0000

On 2026-02-12 at 22:45:05, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> "brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > In general, we should allow people to use symlinks wherever they can use
> > a file or directory unless we can definitively prove that there's a
> > clear security or functionality problem that cannot be avoided.  Git was
> > originally written for Unix, after all.
> 
> Is this also an obvlique reference to a separate potential security
> issue, I wonder.  It reminds me that I need to see if I have to ping
> the thread again.

It was intended to be a reference to the situation we had with, I
believe, `.gitmodules` or `.gitignore` or another file of that sort,
where symlinks were very much broken in that context.  I merely
mentioned security issues for completeness.

I believe it was bb6832d552 ("fsck: warn about symlinked dotfiles we'll
open with O_NOFOLLOW", 2021-05-03) that introduced that change and was
what I was thinking of.
-- 
brian m. carlson (they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA