Re: [Q] would it be bad to make /etc/gitconfig runtime configurable?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 3, 2016, 11:26 UTC
Message-ID: <20161003112654.3vca4zmctslcudfz@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1610031303000.35196@virtualbox>

On Mon, Oct 03, 2016 at 01:06:10PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, Jeff King wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 10:05:37AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > 
> > > The subject says it all.  Would it be bad if we introduce an
> > > environment variable, GIT_SYSTEM_CONFIG=/etc/gitconfig, that names
> > > an alternative location of the system-wide configuration file?
> > > 
> > > That would supersede/deprecate GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM that we
> > > introduced primarily so that we can run our tests without getting
> > > affected by the configuration that happens to be effective on the
> > > host that the test is being run.
> > 
> > I can't think of a reason it would be bad.
> 
> I cannot think of any reason right now, either, but my gut tells me that
> this needs to simmer a while in the backs of our minds, to give potential
> reasons a chance to come forward.
> 
> What would be the use case, BTW? IOW what would it solve that cannot
> already be solved by using XDG_CONFIG_HOME?

The patches Junio posted later use it for the test suite (and I also have had to skip some tests in the past related to system config because of its lack).

I would also use it when doing git experiments on GitHub servers. We keep several relevant config settings in /etc/gitconfig, so if I were to say, build a new version of git and test how it repacked torvalds/linux, I need to make sure it picks up the same config. Usually I do it by baking in the right /etc/gitconfig at build time, but it would be less annoying to be able to override it at run-time.

I admit both of those are uses for git _developers_, though, not git _users_.

-Peff