Re: [PATCH] Add test case for git-config-set

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Nov 18, 2005, 10:57 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0511181148520.8037@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <7vsltuo49q.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Hi,

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> writes:
> 
> > 	git-config-set section.key
> >
> > confusingly enough is --unset (we probably would want to require
> > an explicit command line noise-word "--unset" in this case).

As mentioned in my previous mail, this will go.

> A revised suggestion is:
> 
> 	;# remove all
> 	git-config-set --unset section.key

No. Just remove one unique entry. If people insist it is a good idea to throw away all multivars, I'll think about it. But I am not convinced. Your use case of a multivar does not fit what I think multivars are useful for.

IMHO, multiple key/value pairs are only sensible when they provide a sort of subkey, like Linus did in his example:

	[proxy]
		command=ssh for kernel.org
		command=rsh for myprivate.machine

See, there is a subkey, namely "for kernel.org", which can nicely be expressed as a regex.

IMOHO, your example

	[diff]
		twohead = resolve
		twohead = recursive

would look much better in this way

	[diff]
		twohead = recursive resolve

Several reasons:

	- it is easier to read
	- it does the job
	- it is clear from the beginning, which one precedes the other
	  (for me it was not at all clear that the last entry wins...)

> 	;# remove values that match rx and then append zero or more values
> 	git-config-set --remove rx section.key [value...]

As I said. *If*, then these must be two operations, for your security. But I still don't see a sensible use case of removing all key/value pairs for a certain key (and possibly a regex for the values).

Rather, if you have a sensible setup, you'll want to set/replace/unset exactly one entry.

> 	;# append one or more values (equivalent to specifying --remove
>         ;# with rx that never matches anything).  To reduce
>         ;# confusion, we always require at least one value here.
> 	git-config-set section.key value [value...]

I think it is less error prone to add them one by one, else you have to check the values for uniqueness, too.

Show 7 quoted lines

> I think (aside from "*-set" now becomes confusing), showing the
> value of the specified key to stdout with
> 
> 	git-config-set section.key
> 
> would be a nice addition to complete the suite; has anybody
> noticed that git-var is cumbersome to use for this?

Good point! This will be in my next version.

Ciao, Dscho