Re: Bug: duplicate sections in .git/config after remote removal

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 28, 2018, 16:34 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1803281110260.77@ZVAVAG-6OXH6DA.rhebcr.pbec.zvpebfbsg.pbz>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79ka_dd=4-EVmoKrBVC_y4+eVPSz959BVNmzZkOwiZh_24A@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Stefan & Jason,

On Tue, 27 Mar 2018, Stefan Beller wrote:

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> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 1:41 PM Jason Frey <jfrey@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > at which point you can see the duplicate sections (even though one is
> > empty).  Also note that if you do the steps again, you will be left
> > with 3 sections, 2 of which are empty.  This process can be repeated
> > over and over.
> 
> I agree that this is an issue for the user, and there were some attempts
> to fix it in the past. (feel free to dig them up in the archive at
> https://public-inbox.org/git)

Note: as far as I remember, the attempted fixes were exclusively trying to
remove the empty section. But this report suggests that we could instead
*keep* empty sections, but then reuse them when a new value is added.

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> IIRC the problem is (a) with the loose file format (What if the user put
> a valuable comment just after or before the '[branch "master"]' line?)
> as well as (b) the way the parser/writer works (single pass, line by line)
> 
> (b) specifically made it a "huge effort, but little return" bug,
> so nobody got around for a proper fix.

Yes, (a) makes removing an empty section something less of a desirable thing. Unless there are no comments before and after the section, of course, and yes, (b) is a real thing.

On a positive note: I just finished work on a set of patches addressing this: https://github.com/git/git/compare/master...dscho:empty-config-section (I plan on submitting this tomorrow)

Ciao, Dscho