git silently ignores include directive with single quotes

Hi,

One of the windows users discovered this bug, and I was able to reproduce it on linux.

We are using a custom content filter configuration REPO/.gitconfig which needs to be enabled inside REPO/.git/config:

This works:

[include]
        path = ../.gitconfig

This doesn’t:

[include]
        path = '../.gitconfig'

Notice the single quotes around the filename. When this is the case git silently (!) ignores the custom configuration, which is clearly a bug.

I found the easiest to debug this is by using:

git config --list --show-origin

In the former case it shows the custom config, in the latter it does not.

Yet, git gives no indication of any errors, not even with GIT_TRACE and other debug vars.

The original problem cropped up due to using:

 git config --local include.path '../.gitconfig'

which on linux stripped the single quotes, but on some windows git bash emulation it kept them.

What am I suggesting is that git:

(1) should complain if it encounters an invalid configuration and not silently ignore it. It took quite some effort and time to figure the culprit.

(2) probably allow the quoted location of the file, but it's much less important, as it's easy to rectify once git gives user #1

I don't have the details about the windows user setup, but I was able to reproduce this bug with git version 2.17.1 on linux.

Thank you.