Re: RFE: version-controlled merge rules

> Hi,
> 
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
>> [merge "version"]
>>         name = Version file merge driver
>>         driver = sort -V -r %O %A %B | head -1 > %A.tmp.1 && mv -f %A.tmp.1 %A
> [...]
>> However, I can't even put this in .gitattributes, because doing so would break
>> any user who *doesn't* have the previous rule defined locally. Even worse, if
>> this rule needs to change, propagating it to all new users has to be done
>> manually... never mind if it needs to vary by branch!
>>
>> The simplest way to address this would presumably be to let the
>> repository/working directory contain a .gitconfig file that can contain rules
>> like that.  (Allowing it to be in the repository proper is probably a
>> requirement for merges to be handled correctly on bare repositories; I'm not
>> sure how .gitattributes is handled for that.)
> 
> The main issue I see is that this would make it a little *too* easy to
> run arbitrary code on the user's machine.  Build systems often already
> lead to that, but users are more familiar with the risks for build
> than for version control.
> 
> See [1] for some related discussion.
> 
> That said, using the include.path feature (see git-config(1)), it's
> possible to do something similar:
> 
> 	[include]
> 		path = ../.gitconfig
> 
> Thanks and hope that helps,
> Jonathan
>