Re: Git config multiple values

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 6, 2017, 14:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20171006143219.4bn63aoenluc77fd@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <4b848032-e8b6-be67-58d9-e3fcc2c11853@yahoo.pl>

On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 01:10:17PM +0200, aleksander.baranowski wrote:

> I'm currently using git version 2.14.2. There is possible to put
> multiple values into same variable with git config.

Yep, your examples should behave the same even with older versions.

> Case 1:
> # git config --global user.name Foo - returns 0
> # git config --global user.name Bar - returns 0 and replace Foo to Bar
> # git config --global user.name Foo - returns 0 and replace Bar to Foo

This is all as expected. You're hitting the first case in the manpage synopsis here (I snipped the uninteresting options):

  git config name [value [value_regex]]

So you're doing:

  git config name value

which replaces any existing key by default. You could also do:

  git config --add name value

to add without replacing (if you had a config key that takes multiple values).

> Case 2:
> # git config --global user.name Foo - returns 0
> # git config --global user.name Foo2 Bar - returns 0 and put second name

Here you're doing:

  git config name value value_regex

So we're replacing any values which match the regex "Bar" (and there are none), and leaving others intact. Hence after this you will have two user.name values.

If you wanted a name with two strings, you'd have to quote the string from the shell to leave it as a single argument:

  git config user.name "Foo2 Bar"

Show 5 quoted lines

> # cat ~/.gitconfig
> [user]
> 	email = aleksander.baranowski@yahoo.pl
> 	name = Foo
> 	name = Foo2

Right, this is what I'd expect.

> # git config --global user.name Foo - return 5 and message
> "warning: user.name has multiple values
> error: cannot overwrite multiple values with a single value
>        Use a regexp, --add or --replace-all to change user.name."

And this, too (though I forgot we had such a safety check).

> It's just an opinion, but this behaviour is no consistent for me.
> 
> If it's not the bug it's a feature just let me know.

It's a feature, though I agree that git-config is rather baroque. We're mostly stuck with it for reasons of backwards compatibility, though.

-Peff