Re: [PATCH v5 7/7] meson/Makefile: allow setting submodule encoding at build time

> On Sat, Dec 06, 2025 at 07:52:13AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Adrian Ratiu <adrian.ratiu@collabora.com> writes:
>> 
>> > On Fri, 05 Dec 2025, Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 11:10:30PM +0200, Adrian Ratiu wrote:
>> >>> Some users find it difficult to distribute repo config changes for
>> >>> enabling extensions.submoduleEncoding, or to enable it by passing
>> >>> the config via cmdline, so we add a build-time option which can
>> >>> enable the extension for convenience.
>> >>
>> >> Wouldn't it be more sensible to make this a runtime configuration key
>> >> that users can configure in their gitconfig?
>> >
>> > The request I got from a combination of feedback from Junio, Aaron and
>> > Josh is to avoid any kind of required user intervention or manual
>> > migration, to find ways to automate the transition as much as possible.
>> 
>> How would that lead to build-time behaviour change, though?
>> 
>> Users in managed environments like $CORP can rely on /etc/gitconfig
>> or equivalents managed by their corp-eng, so I am having a hard time
>> imagining why we need anything more than an configuration variable
>> looked at runtime.
>
> I guess you could kind of have both: make it a runtime configuration
> key, but have its default depend on a build configuration. You could for
> example auto-enable it in case `WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES` is enabled. But I
> myself am not sure whether the latter would really be all that important
> in the first place.