Re: [PATCH] config: use GIT_CONFIG in git config sequence

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 26, 2020, 00:16 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5zdn9k3r.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20200425235716.1822560-1-maxmati4@gmail.com>

Mateusz Nowotyński <maxmati4@gmail.com> writes:

> Currently, there is no way to use config file other then ~/.gitconfig.
> This can cause a problem, for example, when running tests of software that
> depends on git. In such a case user's gitconfig may contain settings that
> are incompatible with tests.

While I can remotely imagine how an environment variable that overrides everything might be useful at times, we already use GIT_CONFIG environment for a different purpose, so even if such a feature were desirable, the name is already taken, and you'd want to hunt for another one. Also, I do not think I'll take this patch if the justification were solely the above, as it is a solved problem, together with the use of GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM and GIT_ATTR_NOSYSTEM.

Tests of a software that depends on git, and perhaps other things, will be affected in things under the testing user's home directory, and not just ~/.gitconfig file. Providing stable environment to run in to your tests is a useful thing to do, but it is not a viable or a particularly smart strategy for doing so to tweak each and every software that your software may depend on, and your software itself, with a custom change like this patch.

You can prepare a pretend-home directory for the use of your tests and point the environment variable $HOME to it while running your tests. See how we do this in our test suite for inspiration---it all happens in t/test-lib.sh, I think.

Thanks.