30ca07a249
When defined, this allows plumbing commands that update the index (add, apply, checkout-index, merge-recursive, mv, read-tree, rm, update-index, and write-tree) to write their resulting index to an alternative index file while holding a lock to the original index file. With this, git-commit that jumps the index does not have to make an extra copy of the index file, and more importantly, it can do the update while holding the lock on the index. However, I think the interface to let an environment variable specify the output is a mistake, as shown in the documentation. If a curious user has the environment variable set to something other than the file GIT_INDEX_FILE points at, almost everything will break. This should instead be a command line parameter to tell these plumbing commands to write the result in the named file, to prevent stupid mistakes. Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// GIT - the stupid content tracker //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "git" can mean anything, depending on your mood. - random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant. - stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang. - "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room. - "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations and full access to internals. Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public License. It was originally written by Linus Torvalds with help of a group of hackers around the net. It is currently maintained by Junio C Hamano. Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions. See Documentation/tutorial.txt to get started, then see Documentation/everyday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and "man git-commandname" for documentation of each command. CVS users may also want to read Documentation/cvs-migration.txt. Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git.or.cz/ including full documentation and Git related tools. The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org. To subscribe to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in the body to majordomo@vger.kernel.org. The mailing list archives are available at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git and other archival sites. The messages titled "A note from the maintainer", "What's in git.git (stable)" and "What's cooking in git.git (topics)" and the discussion following them on the mailing list give a good reference for project status, development direction and remaining tasks.