Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 4/4] notes: teach git-notes about notes.<ref>.merge option

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 15:41:28 -0700

Jacob Keller <[email-masked]> writes:

> I spoke to soon. We have an "init_notes_check" function which shows
> that it does refuse to merge outside of refs/notes/* It prevents all
> notes operations outside of refs/notes

OK.  Then it is OK to limit notes.<ref>.mergestrategy so that <ref>
refers to what comes after refs/notes/, because we will not allow
merging to happen outside the hierarchy.

If you are planning to break that promise, however, <ref> must be
always spelled fully (i.e. with refs/notes/ prefix for those inside
the hierarchy) to avoid ambiguity.  Otherwise it will be hard to
interpret a configuration that does something like this (note that
these could come from multiple places, e.g. $HOME/.gitconfig and
$GIT_DIR/config):

    [notes "commits"]
        mergestrategy = concatenate
    [notes "notes/commits"]
        mergestrategy = cat_sort_uniq
    [notes "refs/notes/commits"]
        mergestrategy = overwrite

The three entries in the above example obviously are all meant to
refer to the same refs/notes/commits notes tree, and the usual "last
one wins" rule should apply.  But with the recent git_config_get_*()
interface, you cannot tell which one among them was given the last,
overriding the previous entries.