git config oddity

Heya,

I noticed today that when unsetting the last value in a group git config leaves the empty group header. I was somewhat surprised here, but I am guessing it has a purpose? Anyway, I also noticed (and this threw my manual config parser off) that when later on an option is set to that empty group, a new group is created with the same name. Is this something I have to deal with in my parser (e.g., should I keep scanning the file for occurrences of my header and allow for empty groups, or is this a bug in git config? Either is fine with me, was just wondering :).

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sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code$ mkdir config-oddity
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code$ cd config-oddity/
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/sverre/code/config-oddity/.git/
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ cat .git/config
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = true
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ git config foo.bar spam
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ cat .git/config # as expected
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = true
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
[foo]
	bar = spam
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ git config --unset foo.bar
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ cat .git/config # dubious,
but acceptable
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = true
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
[foo]
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ git config foo.bar eggs
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$ cat .git/config # errr? two
[foo] headers?
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = true
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
[foo]
[foo]
	bar = eggs
sverre@Laptop-Sverre:~/code/config-oddity$
-----------------

Hi,

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

That is on purpose. As .git/config was always meant as a user-editable file, you can put comments into that section. Or comment out some values.

So "git config" does not remove the section, even if no variable is there at the moment.

It is somewhat unfortunate that setting a variable does not find the section; the reason is that it sees sections only when a variable is set (to avoid having to do the parsing itself).

Hth, Dscho

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Ok, this makes sense :). I agree that I would be unhappily surprised if I found that git removed a section that I had put some comments in when I unset a variable.

Ah, unfortunate indeed. I'm not sure I understand why it does not see the existing header? I had a look at config.c but I couldn't really make out why it doesn't. Would it be difficult to add that?

Hi,

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

The config writing uses the config parser to determine where the locations of the config variables (and therefore, sections) are by using the parser, and remembering the position in the file.

Yes.

Ciao, Dscho

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Ok, thanks for the explanation, I'll add a workaround in my code.