Thank you for filling out a Git bug report!
Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue.

What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)

mkdir broken-diff
cd broken-diff
git init
mkdir dir1
mkdir dir2
touch dir1/orig
cd dir2/
ln -s ../dir1/orig sym
cd ..
git add dir*
git ci -m "init"
git checkout -b b
git rm dir2/sym 
git ci -m "remove"
git difftool -d master HEAD

What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior)

git difftool shall compare both branches.

What happened instead? (Actual behavior)

git difftool prints an error:

fatal: could not open '/tmp/git-difftool.l4UM7e/left/dir2/sym' for writing: No such file or directory

Please review the rest of the bug report below.
You can delete any lines you don't wish to share.


[System Info]
git version:
git version 2.31.1
cpu: x86_64
no commit associated with this build
sizeof-long: 8
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: /bin/sh
uname: Linux 5.12.12-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jun 18 14:30:51 UTC 2021 x86_64
compiler info: gnuc: 11.0
libc info: glibc: 2.33
$SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /bin/bash


[Enabled Hooks]