Re: What means "git config bla ~/"?

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 2, 2017, 17:13 UTC
Message-ID: <20171002171300.GP19555@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20171002061303.Horde.SL92grZCqTRV9oQkBFPELQ7@crashcourse.ca>

Hi,

rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> i'm sure i'm about to embarrass myself but, in "man git-config",
> OPTIONS, one reads:
>
>   --path
>
> git-config will expand leading ~ to the value of $HOME, and ~user
> to the   home directory for the specified user. This option has no
> effect when setting the value (but you can use git config bla ~/
> from the command line to let your shell do the expansion).
>
> what's with that "git config bla ~/"? is this some config keyword
> or something?

No need to be embarrased. Here "bla" is a placeholder. That is, for example, I can run

	git config --global include.path ~/.config/git/more-config

or

	git config --global include.path $HOME/.config/git/more-config

to cause

	[include]
		path = /home/me/.config/git/more-config

to be added to my global configuration. The expansion of ~ or $HOME is performed by my shell, not Git. For comparison, if I had run

	git config --global include.path '~/.config/git/more-config'

then that would cause

	[include]
		path = ~/.config/git/more-config

to be added to my global configuration, but it would still have the same effect at run time, since Git is also able to expand ~ to my home directory.

The wording comes from

	commit 1349484e341a3ec2ba02a86c8fbd97ea9dc8c756
	Author: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>
	Date:   Wed Dec 30 17:51:53 2009 +0100

	    builtin-config: add --path option doing ~ and ~user expansion.

I agree with you that it is less clear than it could be. Ideas for clarifying it?

Thanks, Jonathan