Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] setup.c: make bare repo discovery optional

From: Glen Choo <chooglen@google.com>
Date: May 17, 2022, 20:24 UTC
Message-ID: <kl6lilq3j4aq.fsf@chooglen-macbookpro.roam.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <e5139922-9b74-ebfa-756c-629918e0456b@github.com>

Thanks for being thorough, I find it really helpful.

For brevity, I won't reply to comments that I think are obviously good, so you can assume I'll incorproate anything that isn't commented on.

Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On 5/13/2022 7:37 PM, Glen Choo via GitGitGadget wrote:
>> From: Glen Choo <chooglen@google.com>
>> 
>> +This config setting is only respected when specified in a system or global
>> +config, not when it is specified in a repository config or via the command
>> +line option `-c discovery.bare=<value>`.
>
> We are sprinkling config options that have these same restrictions throughout
> the config documentation. It might be time to define a term like "protected
> config" at the top of git-config.txt and then refer to that from these other
> locations.

Agree, and I think defining the term will be useful in future on-list discussions.

Show 19 quoted lines

>> +static int check_bare_repo_allowed(void)
>> +{
>> +	if (discovery_bare_config == DISCOVERY_BARE_UNKNOWN) {
>> +		read_very_early_config(discovery_bare_cb, NULL);
>
> This will add the third place where we use read_very_early_config(),
> adding to the existing calls in tr2_sysenv_load() and
> ensure_valid_ownership(). If I understand it correctly, that means
> that every Git execution in a bare repository will now parse the
> system and global config three times.
>
> This doesn't count the check for uploadpack.packobjectshook in
> upload-pack.c that uses current_config_scope() to restrict its
> value to the system and global config.
>
> We are probably at the point where we need to instead create a
> configset that stores this "protected config" and allow us to
> lookup config keys directly from that configset instead of
> iterating through these config files repeatedly.

Looking at all of the read_very_early_config() calls,

- check_bare_repo_allowed() can use git_configset_get_string()
- ensure_valid_ownership() can use git_configset_get_value_multi()
- tr2_sysenv_load() reads every value with the "trace2." prefix. AFAICT
  configsets only support exact key lookups and I don't see an easy way
  teach configsets to support prefix lookups.

(I didn't look too closely at uploadpack.packobjectshook because I don't know enough about config scopes to comment.)

So using a configset, we'll still need to read the config files at least twice. That's better than thrice, but it doesn't cover the tr2_sysenv_load() use case, and we'll run into this yet again if add function that reads all config values with a given prefix.

An hacky alternative that covers all of these use cases would be to read all protected config in a single pass, e.g.

  static struct protected_config {
         struct safe_directory_data safe_directory_data;
         const char *discovery_bare;
         struct string_list tr2_sysenv;
  };

  static int protected_config_cb()
  {
    /* Parse EVERYTHING that belongs in protected_config. */
  }

but protected_config_cb() would have to parse too many unrelated things for my liking.

So I'll use the configset for the cases where the key is known, and perhaps we'll punt on tr2_sysenv_load().

Show 13 quoted lines

>> +	}
>> +	switch (discovery_bare_config) {
>> +	case DISCOVERY_BARE_NEVER:
>> +		return 0;
>> +	case DISCOVERY_BARE_ALWAYS:
>> +		return 1;
>> +	default:
>> +		BUG("invalid discovery_bare_config %d", discovery_bare_config);
>> +	}
>
> You return -1 in discovery_bare_cb when the key matches, but
> the value is not understood. Should we check the return value
> of read_very_early_config(), too?

This comment doesn't apply because unlike most other config reading functions, read_very_early_config() and read_early_config() die when the callback returns -1.

I'm not sure why this is the case though, and maybe you think there is value in having a non-die()-ing variant, e.g. read_very_early_config_gently()?

Show 19 quoted lines

>>  };
>>  
>>  /*
>> @@ -1239,6 +1293,8 @@ static enum discovery_result setup_git_directory_gently_1(struct strbuf *dir,
>>  		}
>>  
>>  		if (is_git_directory(dir->buf)) {
>> +			if (!check_bare_repo_allowed())
>> +				return GIT_DIR_DISALLOWED_BARE;
>
> Won't this fail if someone runs a Git command inside of a .git/
> directory for a non-bare repository? I just want to be sure that
> we hit this error instead:
>
> 	fatal: this operation must be run in a work tree
>
> I see that this error is tested in t0008-ignores.sh, but that's
> with the default "always" value. It would be good to explicitly
> check that this is the right error when using the "never" config.

Yes, it will fail if run inside of a .git/ directory. "never" prevents you from working from inside .git/ unless you set GIT_DIR.

IIRC, we don't show "fatal: this operation must be run in a work tree" for every Git command, e.g. "git log" works just fine. It makes sense to show this warning when the CWD supports 'some, but not all' Git commands, but I don't think this is valuable if we forbid *all* Git commands.

Instead of trying to make "never" accomodate this use case, perhaps what we want is a "dotgit-only" option that allows a bare repository if it is below a .git/ directory. Since we forbid .git in the index, this seems somewhat safe, but I hadn't proposed this sooner because I don't know if we need it yet, and I'm certain that there are less secure edge cases that need to be thought through.