Re: Why does "git config" output nothing instead of the default value for unset variables?

From: Sebastian Schuberth <sschuberth@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 14, 2013, 12:56 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHGBnuO2d9Wkez4sLLKp3Ei0vkAJBjJp1+m+Lsu3ozaKPQD29A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAH5451nL0cmTy+vwEsJnvX7OP1iSSgY9UMhvrrimk0zWM71YDw@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Andrew Ardill <andrew.ardill@gmail.com> wrote:

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> On 14 April 2013 22:34, Sebastian Schuberth <sschuberth@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Usually when I query a variable I'm not so much interested in whether it is at all (explicitly) set to some value or not, but what value is currently in use.
>
> With your change in place, how do you know if the config item has been
> explicitly set in your system?

Well, this could be done several ways. Maybe output the variable value in all upper case if it's the implicit / built-in default, and in all lower case if it has been explicitly set somewhere.

> The closest thing I can see for doing this is git config --list, but
> perhaps there should be a flag to check if a config item is set?

Yet more command line options? Well, there's probably no way around that in order to maintain backward compatibility.

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> More to the point, I can easily imagine many scripts relying on git
> config returning a value to indicate that a config item has been set.
> Your proposed change would break all those. For that reason, it might
> be nicer to introduce a flag that returns the config if it is set or
> the default otherwise. Something like git config --value perhaps.

Right.

-- 
Sebastian Schuberth