From: Matthieu Moy Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 19:13:42 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC] Possibility to choose ~/.config/git/config instead of ~/.gitconfig Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7vobpcrstn.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Junio C Hamano writes: >> Besides, with my distro package maintainer hat on, I can tell you that >> switching the config file to ~/.config/git and not reading >> ~/.gitconfig would be a complete nonstarter. > > Absolutely. So don't choose to deliberately introduce backward > incompatibliity. Problem solved. It doesn't have to be backward incompatible. The proposal is to _allow_ users to have a ~/.config/git/config file, not to _force_ them to have one. If Git reads both files, then ~/.gitconfig lovers can continue with it, and are not affected. > Why is it bad to keep using ~/.gitconfig in the first place? The UNIX > convention to exclude names that begin with dot is not working for you? The "It's a convention" argument doesn't work here. XDG is also a rather widely used convention these days, so "why not follow the convention" can be used both in favor of ~/.gitconfig or ~/.config/git/config. ~/.gitconfig alone would not be a huge problem, although personnally hate it already. I like to version my handwritten configuration files, but I don't want my $HOME to be a git repository. I already have a ~/etc/ directory with my configuration files in it, and ~/.gitconfig is basically a symbolic link. I wouldn't have to re-structure my $HOME if I had a structured and standard configuration directory like ~/.config. Now, the real issue is that we're starting to have several user-wide config files (core.excludesfile, core.attributesfile, maybe one day we'll want others like user-wide hooks?), and having multiple ~/.git really feels wrong. Just like we have /etc/ for applications that have only one configuration file, and /etc/ for ones who need more, it seems sensible to have a configuration directory for a user, not just a set of configuration files in $HOME. -- Matthieu Moy http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/