Subject: Re: git silently ignores include directive with single quotes

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2018 21:54:14 +0200

On Sat, Sep 08 2018, Martin Ågren wrote:

> Hi Stas
>
> On Sat, 8 Sep 2018 at 21:00, Stas Bekman <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> [include]
>>         path = '../.gitconfig'
>>
>> Notice the single quotes around the filename. When this is the case git
>> silently (!) ignores the custom configuration, which is clearly a bug.
>
> Thanks for reporting and describing out your expectations and what you
> observed.
>
> Actually, there is a test explicitly testing that 'missing include files
> are ignored'. I couldn't find a motivation for this in 9b25a0b52e
> (config: add include directive, 2012-02-06).
>
>> The original problem cropped up due to using:
>>
>>  git config --local include.path '../.gitconfig'
>>
>> which on linux stripped the single quotes, but on some windows git bash
>> emulation it kept them.
>
> Huh, I wouldn't have expected them to be kept. You learn something
> new every day...
>
>> What am I suggesting is that git:
>>
>> (1) should complain if it encounters an invalid configuration and not
>> silently ignore it. It took quite some effort and time to figure the
>> culprit.
>
> Sounds reasonable to me, but I might be missing something. I'm cc-ing
> the original author. Maybe he can recall why he made sure it silently
> ignores missing files.
>
>> (2) probably allow the quoted location of the file, but it's much less
>> important, as it's easy to rectify once git gives user #1
>
> I don't think this will work. Allowing quoting for just this one item,
> or for all? Any and all quoting or just at the first and last character?
> What about those config items where quotes might legitimately occur,
> i.e., we'd need some escaping? Actually, something like '.gitconfig'
> *with* *those* *quotes* is a valid filename on my machine.

The reason missing includes are ignored is that the way this is expected
to be used is e.g.:

    [include]
        path ~/.gitconfig.work

Where .gitconfig.work is some configuration you're going to drop into
place on your $dayjob servers, but not on your personal machine, even
though you sync the same ~/.gitconfig everywhere.

A lot of people who use includes rely on this, but I see from this
thread this should be better documented.

If we were to make nonexisting files an error, we'd need something like
an extension of the includeIf syntax added in 3efd0bedc6 ("config: add
conditional include", 2017-03-01) 3efd0bedc6 ("config: add conditional
include", 2017-03-01). I.e.:

    [includeIfcond "test -e ~/.gitconfig.work"]
        path = ~/.gitconfig.work

Or something like that, this is getting increasingly harder to shove
into the *.ini config syntax.