setup: suppress implicit "." work-tree for bare repos

If an explicit GIT_DIR is given without a working tree, we
implicitly assume that the current working directory should
be used as the working tree. E.g.,:

  GIT_DIR=/some/repo.git git status

would compare against the cwd.

Unfortunately, we fool this rule for sub-invocations of git
by setting GIT_DIR internally ourselves. For example:

  git init foo
  cd foo/.git
  git status ;# fails, as we expect
  git config alias.st status
  git status ;# does not fail, but should

What happens is that we run setup_git_directory when doing
alias lookup (since we need to see the config), set GIT_DIR
as a result, and then leave GIT_WORK_TREE blank (because we
do not have one). Then when we actually run the status
command, we do setup_git_directory again, which sees our
explicit GIT_DIR and uses the cwd as an implicit worktree.

It's tempting to argue that we should be suppressing that
second invocation of setup_git_directory, as it could use
the values we already found in memory. However, the problem
still exists for sub-processes (e.g., if "git status" were
an external command).

You can see another example with the "--bare" option, which
sets GIT_DIR explicitly. For example:

  git init foo
  cd foo/.git
  git status ;# fails
  git --bare status ;# does NOT fail

We need some way of telling sub-processes "even though
GIT_DIR is set, do not use cwd as an implicit working tree".
We could do it by putting a special token into
GIT_WORK_TREE, but the obvious choice (an empty string) has
some portability problems.

Instead, we add a new boolean variable, GIT_IMPLICIT_WORK_TREE,
which suppresses the use of cwd as a working tree when
GIT_DIR is set. We trigger the new variable when we know we
are in a bare setting.

The variable is left intentionally undocumented, as this is
an internal detail (for now, anyway). If somebody comes up
with a good alternate use for it, and once we are confident
we have shaken any bugs out of it, we can consider promoting
it further.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/t/t1510-repo-setup.sh b/t/t1510-repo-setup.sh
index 80aedfca8c..cf2ee7885a 100755
--- a/t/t1510-repo-setup.sh
+++ b/t/t1510-repo-setup.sh
@@ -517,6 +517,25 @@ test_expect_success '#16c: bare .git has no worktree' '
 		"$here/16c/.git" "(null)" "$here/16c/sub" "(null)"
 '
 
+test_expect_success '#16d: bareness preserved across alias' '
+	setup_repo 16d unset "" unset &&
+	(
+		cd 16d/.git &&
+		test_must_fail git status &&
+		git config alias.st status &&
+		test_must_fail git st
+	)
+'
+
+test_expect_success '#16e: bareness preserved by --bare' '
+	setup_repo 16e unset "" unset &&
+	(
+		cd 16e/.git &&
+		test_must_fail git status &&
+		test_must_fail git --bare status
+	)
+'
+
 test_expect_success '#17: GIT_WORK_TREE without explicit GIT_DIR is accepted (bare case)' '
 	# Just like #16.
 	setup_repo 17a unset "" true &&