Can I have git gui and git bash and eclipse git plugin looking at same repo simultaneously?

Question

I am using Eclipse to work on Android java projects on a Windows 7 machine. I am using Git to version-track, back up, and share.

I have git gui, git bash, and the eclipse git plug-in. My question really comes down to:

Is it safe and/or will my tools (gui, bash, eclipse) work right if I have them all open and looking at the same git repo at the same time?

I ask this because I have had eclipse fail to do a checkin a few times, and one time in git gui when it was barfing I got brave/stupid and hit the "unlock git index" choice. Since I did that unlock, none of my git clients have complained. But the suggestion that there IS a lock and that I "manually" unlocked it has me afraid that I have opened the door to non-thread safe crashes in my git repos.

TIA

Answer 1

Yes, it is safe. The index lock is something that is normally only intended to be held while an operation is in progress (e.g. while a commit is being created or a merge is being handled).

If you have to manually unlock the index it probably means one of your Git clients crashed/errored while it was doing one of those operations and thus accidentally left it locked.