Re: [PATCH 1/2] remote.c: silently tolerate single-level keys like remote.default

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 24, 2009, 16:19 UTC
Message-ID: <7vzle6dny7.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1240494546-25775-1-git-send-email-j6t@kdbg.org>

Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org> writes:

Show 19 quoted lines

> If the config file contains a section like this:
>
>     [remote]
>             default = foo
>
> (it should be '[remotes]') then commands like
>
>     git status
>     git checkout
>     git branch -v
>
> fail even though they are not obviously related to remotes. (These commands
> write "ahead, behind" information and, therefore, access the configuration
> of remotes.)
>
> Typos in configuration keys usually do not hurt because they never match
> in look-ups. But this case is different: it does match, but it does not
> have the expected format. With this patch this situation is treated more
> like a typo.

I agree with the patch text, but we should realize that this is not "silently tolerating typos". The existing per-remote variables such as url, proxy, fetch, etc. are defined to be, eh, per-remote, and by definition require three-level syntax. There is nothing that prevents us from actually fixing the stupid mistake that is "remotes.default = foo" and make it "remote.default = foo".

To avoid confusion, we might want to deprecate remotes.default and make it remotegroup.default or something like that, though.