Re: Alphabetize git config --list

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 28, 2012, 21:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20120528212309.GA4220@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAFus=5=cp62hpLM_Odog--Q0vER8kkT5Doqo28i-yZQyfvv4gQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 01:58:28PM -0700, Zach wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I was wondering if it would be possible to alphabetically order git
> config --list by default.
> 
> Essentially this
> $ git config --list | sort

No, it's not a good idea; the order of keys is important. For example, this config:

  [color]
    ui = true
    ui = false

is different than this:

  [color]
    ui = false
    ui = true

While that seems like a contrived example, consider something like a .git/config repo-specific config file overriding a user-wide ~/.gitconfig file. We do it by overwriting the old key.

There are also some "multi" values which accept multiple entries to create a list, and the list order may be relevant (I'd have to check, though; the only one that comes to mind is refspecs, and I don't know that order matters there).

-Peff