Re: [PATCH] convert: legitimately disable clean/smudge filter with an empty override

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 25, 2016, 01:25 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr3h6bgbe.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1453638170-52041-1-git-send-email-larsxschneider@gmail.com>

larsxschneider@gmail.com writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> From: Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com>
>
> A clean/smudge filter can be disabled if set to an empty string. However,
> Git will try to run the empty string as command which results in a error
> message per processed file.

The above two sentences do not make any sense to me. You observe that the command refuses to work when the variable is set to an empty string--why then can you claim "filter can be disabled if set to an empty string"? I'd consider that the system is not working with such a configuration, i.e. "filter cannot be disabled by setting it to empty; such a request will result in an error".

> Teach Git to consider an empty clean/smudge filter as legitimately disabled
> and do not print an error message.

On the other hand, this does make sense to me, as I do not think of a good way to say "earlier configuration entry said we should use this filter, but we actually do not want to use that one (or any)" because a configuration, unlike attributes entry, cannot be reset. The closest you can do is to set it to empty, so it may be a good new feature to do this.