Re: [PATCH/RFC 0/5] add "unset.variable" for unsetting previously set variables

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
Date: Oct 8, 2014, 05:46 UTC
Message-ID: <vpqzjd7kta6.fsf@anie.imag.fr>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1tqjkexe.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>
>>>   - "[config] safe = section.variable" will list variables that can
>>>     be included with the config.safeInclude mechanism.  Any variable
>>>     that is not marked as config.safe that appears in the file
>>>     included by the config.safeInclude mechanism will be ignored.
>>
>> Why user must know which variables are safe, why it cannot be left to
>> Git to know which configuration variables can call external scripts?
>
> That's a fallback to let them take responsibility for variables we
> do not mark as "safe"; and having that fallback mechanism lets us
> keep the set of variables we by default mark as safe to the absolute
> minimum.

Perhaps this would need a way to say "this value is safe for this variable" too. I don't have a real use-case, but one could say something like "I'm OK with the file overriding core.editor, but the only values I accept are nano, vim and emacs".

It doesn't seem to be a prerequisite to implement the safeInclude feature, but we should live room in the namespace for the day we want to add it.

I don't have really good idea for it. The first I could think of was

[config "safe"]
    core.editor = nano
    core.editor = vim
    core.editor = emacs

but it's not accepted by the current parser, hence not backward compatible.

Emacs has such mechanism for -*- ... -*- local variables in files for example.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/