Re: git should not use a default user.email config value

From: Andrew Ardill <andrew.ardill@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 13, 2013, 12:52 UTC
Message-ID: <CAH5451nxgpa4Q-BpwhD7yD6V6_LWBP=+oEDR3u0eGErSWNEBbQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130813114635.GA16506@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On 13 August 2013 21:46, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

> Like I said, I do not have a particular use for it, but I don't think it
> would hurt anybody who does not use it. If you want to polish it up into
> a real patch with docs and tests, I don't mind.

I'll have a go at this.

> The only downside I can think of is that we might want to use the
> subsection in "include.SUBSECTION.*" for some other limiting conditions
> (e.g., "only include this config when running version >= X.Y", or even
> "include only when environment variable FOO is true").

It seems as though gitconfig doesn't have a standard way of dealing with 'sub-subsections', which is essentially what this is trying to implement.

It makes sense that there could be different 'modes' of includes. These could be the ones you mentioned already, such as repo and env, but could also be things like branch where the config changes depending on which branch you are on. Ideally, multiple entries per mode would be allowed. Implementing all that initially would be overkill however if this sort of functionality is desirable the ability to easily add new modes would be a great boon down the track.

The four pieces of information we need to include are that this is an include, the path to the include, the mode, and the mode specific parameter. Your proposal is to allow the sub-subsection by concatenating with a ":" like this

[include "<mode>:<mode-param>]
  path = <path>

Alternatively, we could allow chaining of subsections (couldn't find any previous discussion on this) by adding whitespace between each subsection. Seems like lots of potentially unnecessary work, but maybe this has already been discussed or is the most appropriate way of doing it.

$ git config --global include.repo./magic/.path ~/.gitconfig-magic

[include repo "/magic/"]
   path = .gitconfig-magic

We could also require a unique key that grouped the options together. This seems like the easiest and most flexible method, and doesn't require any 'special' considerations for the subsection. It would be harder for a user to configure, and the concept of a mode seems less intuitive.

$ git config --global include.magicrepos.mode repo $ git config --global include.magicrepos.param /magic/ $ git config --global include.magicrepos.path ~/.gitconfig-magic

[include "magicrepos"]
  mode = repo
  param = "/magic/"
  path = ~/.gitconfig-magic

Of the three I probably think the subsection chaining is the nicest overall, though your original "repo:" proposal seems to be the easiest to implement.

Regards,

Andrew Ardill