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Re: Intricacies of submodules

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Apr 15, 2008, 01:13 UTC
Message-ID
<7vd4or7wdt.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<1208202740.25663.69.camel@work.sfbay.sun.com>
Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> writes:
Show 9 quoted lines
>> Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that everybody should start rolling
>> their own "sane environment setup script" and ship their project with it.
>> I am only suggesting it as a possible way to do your "policy enforcement"
>> without having to introduce in-tree .gitconfig, which I unfortunately see
>> no fundamental upsides but definite downsides (security included).
>
> And here comes my question: could you, please, elaborate on *technical*
> drawbacks of in-tree .gitconfig (such as security that you've
> mentioned).

Just to name a few, as I do not see a point in spending time elaborating in detail when there is an alternative without such security downsides.

One of your examples was about a forced use of custom merge tool. Consider in-tree .gitconfig that is always read for everybody that describes such a tool. A malicious script named there is a security risk for people who clone such a project. A smudge filter is even worse, as it kicks in the minute you try to check out the project.

These executable (not just merge tool or attribute filters) are designed to be named by .git/config exactly because .git/config is designed to be personal (i.e. "that _particular repository only_") and you can afford to be environment and platform specific there. If you start describing them in in-tree .gitconfig, they must be cross platform and (worse yet) you have to make sure they are installed everywhere.

There are states recorded by git-submodule whether the particular repository has seen and is interested in which submodule (i.e. "submodule init" has been run).

I'm too lazy to make a laundary list of what you can have in .git/config with the current system (see Documentation/config.txt), but that part of the system is built around the design that the configuration is specific to the repository (and sharing what the user records in ~/.gitconfig across repositories is in line with it).

Unless you are willing to sift through all of them, mark which ones can be overriden by in-tree .gitconfig and which ones cannot, and implement an easy to use (by both the developers and the users) mechanism to enforce the distinction, just changing the git_config() function to read from one new place (i.e. in-tree .gitconfig) would not be a sufficient solution for what you seem to want to do.

Previous: Roman ShaposhnikNext: Ping Yin
Message 21 of 48 in “Migrating svn to git with heavy use of externals”
  1. D. Stuart FreemanMar 31, 2008
  2. D. Stuart FreemanApr 8, 2008
  3. Avery PennarunApr 8, 2008
  4. D. Stuart FreemanApr 8, 2008
  5. Avery PennarunApr 8, 2008
  6. D. Stuart FreemanApr 8, 2008
  7. Roman ShaposhnikApr 9, 2008
  8. Avery PennarunApr 9, 2008
  9. Roman ShaposhnikApr 9, 2008
  10. Avery PennarunApr 9, 2008
  11. Junio C HamanoApr 9, 2008
  12. Intricacies of submodules [was: Migrating svn to git with heavy use of externals]Roman Shaposhnik, Apr 10, 2008
  13. Junio C HamanoApr 10, 2008
  14. Roman ShaposhnikApr 10, 2008
  15. Junio C HamanoApr 11, 2008
  16. Ping YinApr 11, 2008
  17. Junio C HamanoApr 11, 2008
  18. Roman ShaposhnikApr 12, 2008
  19. Junio C HamanoApr 12, 2008
  20. Roman ShaposhnikApr 14, 2008
  21. Junio C HamanoApr 15, 2008
  22. Ping YinApr 15, 2008
  23. Roman V. ShaposhnikApr 16, 2008
  24. Jeremy Maitin-ShepardApr 17, 2008
  25. Linus TorvaldsApr 17, 2008
  26. Junio C HamanoApr 17, 2008
  27. Roman V. ShaposhnikApr 17, 2008
  28. Martin LanghoffApr 17, 2008
  29. Junio C HamanoApr 17, 2008
  30. Sverre RabbelierApr 17, 2008
  31. Martin LanghoffApr 17, 2008
  32. Sverre RabbelierApr 17, 2008
  33. Martin LanghoffApr 17, 2008
  34. Ping YinApr 18, 2008
  35. Dmitry PotapovApr 17, 2008
  36. Linus TorvaldsApr 17, 2008
  37. Ping YinApr 18, 2008
  38. Jakub NarebskiApr 18, 2008
  39. Ping YinApr 12, 2008
  40. Roman ShaposhnikApr 14, 2008
  41. Ping YinApr 12, 2008
  42. Junio C HamanoApr 12, 2008
  43. Ping YinApr 12, 2008
  44. Ping YinApr 10, 2008
  45. Roman ShaposhnikApr 10, 2008
  46. Intricacies of submodules [was: Migrating svn to git with heavy use of externals]Roman Shaposhnik, Apr 9, 2008
  47. Avery PennarunApr 9, 2008
  48. Avery PennarunApr 18, 2008

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