From 7ec30aaa5ba2a71287879d7bd9a5c55363ea1bbe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Michael Haggerty Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:09:24 +0100 Subject: Provide a mechanism to turn off symlink resolution in ceiling paths MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Commit 1b77d83cab 'setup_git_directory_gently_1(): resolve symlinks in ceiling paths' changed the setup code to resolve symlinks in the entries in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES. Because those entries are compared textually to the symlink-resolved current directory, an entry in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES that contained a symlink would have no effect. It was known that this could cause performance problems if the symlink resolution *itself* touched slow filesystems, but it was thought that such use cases would be unlikely. The intention of the earlier change was to deal with a case when the user has this: GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/home/gitster but in reality, /home/gitster is a symbolic link to somewhere else, e.g. /net/machine/home4/gitster. A textual comparison between the specified value /home/gitster and the location getcwd(3) returns would not help us, but readlink("/home/gitster") would still be fast. After this change was released, Anders Kaseorg reported: > [...] my computer has been acting so slow when I’m not connected to > the network. I put various network filesystem paths in > $GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES, such as > /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n/andersk (to avoid hitting its parents > /afs/athena.mit.edu, /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a, and > /afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n which all live in different AFS > volumes). Now when I’m not connected to the network, every > invocation of Git, including the __git_ps1 in my shell prompt, waits > for AFS to timeout. To allow users to work around this problem, give them a mechanism to turn off symlink resolution in GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES entries. All the entries that follow an empty entry will not be checked for symbolic links and used literally in comparison. E.g. with these: GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=:/foo/bar:/xyzzy or GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/foo/bar::/xyzzy we will not readlink("/xyzzy") because it comes after an empty entry. With the former (but not with the latter), "/foo/bar" comes after an empty entry, and we will not readlink it, either. Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/git.txt | 19 +++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) (limited to 'Documentation') diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt index 6710cb0a4..6bc18014c 100644 --- a/Documentation/git.txt +++ b/Documentation/git.txt @@ -653,12 +653,19 @@ git so take care if using Cogito etc. The '--namespace' command-line option also sets this value. 'GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES':: - This should be a colon-separated list of absolute paths. - If set, it is a list of directories that git should not chdir - up into while looking for a repository directory. - It will not exclude the current working directory or - a GIT_DIR set on the command line or in the environment. - (Useful for excluding slow-loading network directories.) + This should be a colon-separated list of absolute paths. If + set, it is a list of directories that git should not chdir up + into while looking for a repository directory (useful for + excluding slow-loading network directories). It will not + exclude the current working directory or a GIT_DIR set on the + command line or in the environment. Normally, Git has to read + the entries in this list and resolve any symlink that + might be present in order to compare them with the current + directory. However, if even this access is slow, you + can add an empty entry to the list to tell Git that the + subsequent entries are not symlinks and needn't be resolved; + e.g., + 'GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES=/maybe/symlink::/very/slow/non/symlink'. 'GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM':: When run in a directory that does not have ".git" repository -- cgit v1.2.1