This is actually worse than I thought; when git is being run with a
detached work tree, GIT_INDEX_FILE is treated as a path relative to CWD,
instead of the normal behavior of relative the top of the work tree.
This seems to make it basically impossible for any program that wants to
use GIT_INDEX_FILE to use anything other than an absolute path to it; there
are too many configurations to keep straight that can change how git
interprets what should be a simple relative path to a file.
(I have complained to the git developers.)
This affected git annex view. It turns out that some other places
that use GIT_INDEX_FILE were already working around the bug. I removed the
workaround from Annex.Branch since the new workaround will do.
I had hoped that the git devs could change git's handling of partial
commits to not use a false index file, but seems not.
So, this relies on some git internals to detect that case. The test suite
has a test case added to catch it if changes to git break it.
This commit was sponsored by Paul Tagliamonte.
Didn't know that this library existed!
This includes making git-annex not re-exec itself on start on windows, and
making the test suite on Windows run tests without forking.
It was possible for a interrupted sync or merge in direct mode to
leave the work tree out of sync with the last recorded commit.
This would result in the next commit seeing files missing from the work
tree, and committing their removal.
Now, a direct mode merge happens not only in a throwaway work tree, but using
a temporary index file, and without any commits or index changes
being made until the real work tree has been updated. If the merge is
interrupted, the work tree may have some updated files, but worst case a
commit will redundantly commit changes that come from the merge.
This commit was sponsored by Tony Cantor.
