Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 7/7] meson/Makefile: allow setting submodule encoding at build time

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2025 07:52:13 +0900

Adrian Ratiu <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Fri, 05 Dec 2025, Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 11:10:30PM +0200, Adrian Ratiu wrote:
>>> Some users find it difficult to distribute repo config changes for
>>> enabling extensions.submoduleEncoding, or to enable it by passing
>>> the config via cmdline, so we add a build-time option which can
>>> enable the extension for convenience.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be more sensible to make this a runtime configuration key
>> that users can configure in their gitconfig?
>
> The request I got from a combination of feedback from Junio, Aaron and
> Josh is to avoid any kind of required user intervention or manual
> migration, to find ways to automate the transition as much as possible.

How would that lead to build-time behaviour change, though?

Users in managed environments like $CORP can rely on /etc/gitconfig
or equivalents managed by their corp-eng, so I am having a hard time
imagining why we need anything more than an configuration variable
looked at runtime.