From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:26:12 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 2/5] setup: extract path_allowlist_apply() Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20260928133846.2094261-3-christian.couder@gmail.com> Christian Couder writes: > + /* > + * A .gitconfig in $HOME may be shared across different > + * machines and the config variable entries may or may not > + * exist as paths on all of these machines. In other words, > + * it is not a warning worthy event when there is no such path > + * on this machine---the entry may be useful elsewhere. > + */ This might be a minor point (as not many people may be using the safe.directory feature that this was moved from), and this dates back two years, starting with dc0edbb01c (safe.directory: normalize the configured path, 2024-07-30), but the above design decision cuts both ways. If you misspelled a pathname, you would never be told about it. I wonder if we want to allow users to explicitly mark that it is OK if a path does not exist, in much the same way that a pathname-typed configuration variable can be prefixed with :(optional) to tell the system "if this path exists on the system, use it, but if not, instead of warning, pretend that you did not see this specified". That way, a user can first specify the value normally, and then when they reuse the .gitconfig file somewhere else that does not have the path, they see a warning message. You would help them by giving a hint, e.g., Specified path foo/bar does not exist. If you spelled the pathname correctly, and the path is allowed to be missing, mark it as optional, i.e., ":(optional)foo/bar". or something along those lines in the warning message and the world would be a much better place. In any case, it is outside the scope of this series, beyond leaving a NEEDSWORK comment here, and/or a #leftoverbits comment in the review.