Re: [PATCH v7 3/3] config: add conditional include

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 3, 2017, 19:05 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4lza9o5r.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170303063052.xkjoipuaohcwdl4n@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> That was how I had originally envisioned the namespace working when I
> introduced include.path long ago. And I think Duy's v1 used that, but
> the feedback was that it was not sufficiently obvious that the
> subsection was a conditional.

I am not sure about "obviousness", but I agree that we do not know that "conditional include" would be the only thing we want for the second level for "include.path" directive. "include-if.<cond>.path" is better for that reason.

I presume that you could still do

	[include "if:gitdir=$path"]
		path = ...

i.e. design the second level to begin with a token that tells readers what it means (and assign "if:" token for "conditional include"), but I do not think it is worth it.

I also imagine that

	[include]
		condition = ...
		path = ...

is easier to read and write by end-users, but it probably is not feasible because it requires too invasive change to the current code to teach it to grok such construct.

Between "include-if" and "includeIf", if people find the latter not too ugly, I'd prefer to keep it the way Duy posted. Because of the way "include.path" and "include-if.<cond>.path" work, we can declare that they are not like ordinary configuration variable definition at all but are higher-level directives and that may be a sufficient justification to allow "-" in its name, though, if people find "includeIf" too ugly a name to live.