From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:44:15 GMT
Subject: Re: hostname: includeIf condition — anyone already working on this?
Message-ID: <20260929014415.GB1089022@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAK4AdTRdNEU8cLFQ_7A=CUUL6u6dc327rn_H-SeBBD_dD-K7PA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 28, 2026 at 08:43:49PM -0300, Isabella Caselli wrote:

> I found a related proposal from 2022 for an includeIf condition based
> on the operating system [2], which stalled over disagreements about
> naming and case sensitivity. My understanding is that "hostname:" is a
> narrower, separate condition (machine identity, not platform), so I
> don't think it needs to revisit that discussion, but I wanted to check
> before starting:
> 
> - Is it still relevant for the project?
>    - If yes, is anyone already working on this issue?

I think it's a reasonable feature to have. I don't recall seeing anybody
else work on it recently (and a quick search of the list archive
confirms).

But see below.

> - Any objection to the approach itself? The same machine can report
> its hostname differently depending on how it's set up — sometimes just
> the short name, sometimes with the full network address attached to it
> — so it isn't obvious whether the condition should compare that value
> exactly as the system reports it, or normalize it somehow before
> comparing.

Yes, that is the tricky part. :) There were some patches in 2024:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/20240307205006.467443-1-ignacio@iencinas.com/

where the issue came up. Based on my recollection and a quick skim of
the thread, I think the consensus was that it's OK to document that it
is system-dependent whether we'll match against a short of fully
qualified hostname. But exposing our view of the hostname via git-var
(e.g., "git var GIT_HOSTNAME") might be a helpful debugging aid.

It looks like after review on v3 of the series we never saw more. I'd
guess the author (cc'd) just never got around to pushing it forward.

-Peff