Bug: Git Maintenance does not register multiple repos

When I run — `git maintenance register` to register a particular repository for maintenance, it appends a new entry to `~/.gitconfig` with the repo name.

```
[maintenance]
       repo = /path/to/repo-1
       repo = /path/to/repo-2
```

Now, since git uses the INI format for these files, this would imply that repo-2 actually overrides repo 1 for maintenance.

This implies that a user can only register a single repository on their system for maintenance.

What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) I expected that multiple repositories on the system could be setup for maintenance using this command. Which would mean, the `repo` filed would be an array.

```
[maintenance]
       repo[] = /path/to/repo-1
       repo[] = /path/to/repo-2
```
What happened instead? (Actual behavior)
It appended an entry with the same key, which would mean only the last
key wins, and a user cannot have
multiple repos as a part of maintenance.

What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? Mentioned earlier.

Anything else you want to add: No.

Please review the rest of the bug report below. You can delete any lines you don't wish to share.

[System Info] git version: git version 2.39.3 (Apple Git-146) cpu: arm64 no commit associated with this build sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh feature: fsmonitor--daemon uname: Darwin 23.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 23.5.0: Wed May 1 20:12:58 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.121.3~5/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 arm64 compiler info: clang: 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4) libc info: no libc information available $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /opt/homebrew/bin/fish

[Enabled Hooks] post-checkout post-commit post-merge pre-push

Hi

On Thu, Jun 20, 2024, at 15:15, Shubham Kanodia wrote:

Imply? Did you test this? From memory this is a multi-valued config, and multi-valued configs are sometimes listed by using `=` multiple times for the same config variable. That’s also what [this] email says:

  “ The 'git maintenance [un]register' commands set or unset the multi-
    valued maintenance.repo config key with the absolute path of the
    current repository. These are set in the global config file.

🔗 this: https://lore.kernel.org/git/5aa9cc1d6b93b5ad3d66ac01a4518a91ced39bcb.1664287021.git.gitgitgadget@gmail.com/

I’ve never seen that git config uses the INI format. I’ve had the impression that it is a bespoke format that simply looks like the INI format. (But is the INI format even standardized?)

I have two repositories registered. When I run this:

``` git for-each-repo --config=maintenance.repo maintenance run ```

Well, it doesn’t tell me what repositories are being manipulated, but I do get two of these lines:

``` Enumerating objects: […] ```

So I surmise that this command is being run twice.

On Thu, Jun 20, 2024, at 17:34, Shubham Kanodia wrote:

I see no warrant for such an assumption.

In my experience, plenty of syntaxes are described as like-X”. Java and C# are C-like. That doesn’t mean you can use a C parser on those other languages. Config files are simpler but the same principle applies.

Apparently there isn’t a spec because it is bespoke.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/68461700/1725151

There are two dimensions

1. How config variables are parsed
2. What is expected of the specific config variable

`core.editor` is a single value. You can test with

```
[core]
	editor=vim
	editor=nano
```

The last one wins here. `core.editor` expects a single value.

But you can define a multi-valued variable

```
[customsection]
    mycustomvariable = value1
    mycustomvariable = value2
    mycustomvariable = value3
```

``` $ git config --global --get-all customsection.mycustomvariable value1 value2 value3 ```

On 21/06/2024 07:58, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote:

The syntax is documented on the "git config" man page.

To expand a little on what Kristoffer has said - this means that you need to know in advance what type of variable you are checking. You can do that by reading the documentation for that variable on the "git config" man page. "git config" also offers the --type=<type> option to normalize values to the expected type.

Best Wishes

Phillip