Re: Configuring the location of ~/.gitconfig

From: Anurag Priyam <anurag08priyam@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 27, 2012, 06:40 UTC
Message-ID: <CAD1m08Wz7WqP8Yxgc6xuhBSntQ0PS6hGOzHWrcd0VAbARmkuUA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v6270t2tb.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'd like to configure the location of ~/.gitconfig through an
>> environment variable.  My usecase is a simple enough: I have a
>> repository with all my dotfiles, and I don't want to symlink
>> ~/dotfiles/.gitconfig from $HOME after cloning it.  Does anyone else
>> think the feature will be useful?
>
> Not me. For that particular use case, my approach (long before I
> switched the vcs that controls my dotfiles to git) have always been
> to have ~/src that is version controlled, with a Makefile that
> builds/adjusts dotfiles appropriately for each box and installs them
> in the proper place.

Makefile is what I wanted to avoid when I suggested Ram that maybe Git could _optionally_ read the location of global gitconfig from an environment variable that can be exported in zshenv or bash_profile.

I don't think either way is the best way of managing dotfiles. Just a matter of preference. The environment variable approach doesn't require you to run `make` everytime you sync your dotfiles across different machines, and that is what I like.

Also, Git allows configuring the location of template directory via an environment variable (GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR). Since Git has already fixed the location of global gitconfig, it might as well read the location of template directory from there (init.templatedir). Why the added flexibility? Well, I have been exploiting the feature to manage git templates through my zsh configuration.

-- 
Anurag Priyam