GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM problem when working with terminal and MacFusion

Question

I'm using MacFusion with OSXFuse(similar to MacFuse) to mount my server over SSH onto my office machine. When I cd into my rails work directory on the server, i can't see any git info in my zsh prompt. If i try a git pull origin, i get the following error message:

fatal: Not a git repository (or any parent up to mount parent /Volumes) Stopping at filesystem boundary (GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM not set) 

I know I can ssh to the server but then wouldn't I lose zsh autocorrection & history? Wouldn't I also need to set up textmate and other software to use ssh? And wouldn't I need to remote desktop to install DMG's and so on? All of that seems like a bit of a hassle.

Is there a better way to do what I want to do? Otherwise is there a way to enable GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM?

PS - MacFusion can also mount the server over FTP - would that be preferable to SSH?

Answer 1

I got this error until I realized that I hadn't intialized a Git repository in that folder, on a mounted vagrant machine.

So I typed git init and then git worked.

Answer 2

Are you ssh'ing to a directory that's inside your work tree? If the root of your ssh mount point doesn't include the .git dir, then zsh won't be able to find git info. Make sure you're mounting something that includes the root of the repo.

As for GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM, it doesn't do what you want. Git by default will stop at a filesystem boundary. If you turn that on (and it's just an env var), then git will cross the filesystem boundary and keep looking. However, that's almost never useful, because you'd be implying that you have a .git directory on your local machine that's somehow meant to manage a work tree that's comprised partially of an sshfs mount. That doesn't make much sense.