Re: Q: rational for $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config to be "non global" or just a bug?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 12, 2017, 01:05 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtvww3gea.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20171211225615.GC214273@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> I think the documentation
>
> 	~/.gitconfig
> 		User-specific configuration file. Also called "global"
> 		configuration file.
>
> should be clarified --- e.g. it could say
>
> 	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config
> 	~/.gitconfig
> 		User-specific configuration files. Because options in
> 		these files are not specific to any repository, thes
> 		are sometimes called global configuration files.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Show 8 quoted lines

> As for "git config --global", I think the best thing would be to split
> it into two options: something like "git config --user" and "git
> config --xdg-user".  That way, it is unambiguous which configuration
> file the user intends to inspect or modify.  When a user calls "git
> config --global" and both files exist, it could warn that the command
> is ambiguous.
>
> Thoughts?

I actually thought that the plan was "you either have this, or the other one, never both at the same time" (and I think those who pushed the XDG thing in to the system made us favor it over the traditional one). So as long as --global updates the one that exists, and updates XDG one when both or neither do, I think we should be OK. And from that viewpoint, we definitely do not want two kinds of --global to pretend as if we support use of both at the same time.