Re: [PATCH] gitweb/INSTALL: GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM is for backward compatibility

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 16, 2013, 22:26 UTC
Message-ID: <20130416222600.GG29773@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAM9Z-nkbBS5qvbkocdGWj7rwtSxB86+R4jdjcBOxCU4YjtgZ1A@mail.gmail.com>

Drew Northup wrote:

>                             This is unobtrusive yet to the point.

I agree with the spirit.

[...]

Show 10 quoted lines

> --- a/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt
> @@ -55,7 +55,8 @@ following order:
>     then fallback system-wide configuration file (defaults to
> '/etc/gitweb.conf').
> 
>  Values obtained in later configuration files override values obtained earlier
> -in the above sequence.
> +in the above sequence. This is different from many system-wide software
> +installations and will stay this way for historical reasons.

That makes it sound like the "per instance overrides common overrides built-in" cascading is what is unusual and what we need to apologize for.

How about something like the following? (It uses a BUGS section to make the warning easy to notice for people tracking down confusing behavior by searching for "gitweb.conf".)

diff --git i/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt w/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt
index eb63631..ea0526e 100644
--- i/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt
+++ w/Documentation/gitweb.conf.txt
@@ -857,6 +857,13 @@ adding the following lines to your gitweb configuration file:
 	$known_snapshot_formats{'zip'}{'disabled'} = 1;
 	$known_snapshot_formats{'tgz'}{'compressor'} = ['gzip','-6'];
 
+BUGS
+----
+Debugging would be easier if the fallback configuration file
+(`/etc/gitweb.conf`) and environment variable to override its location
+('GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM') had names reflecting their "fallback" role.
+The current names are kept to avoid breaking working setups.
+
 ENVIRONMENT
 -----------
 The location of per-instance and system-wide configuration files can be