On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted text
> Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org> writes:
> 
> > Since it sets GIT_DIR, it also could simply unset GIT_CONFIG, and then 
> > everything would just write to the config file for the new GIT_DIR. On the 
> > other hand, if you have GIT_CONFIG exported in your environment, and you 
> > set up a repository with "git clone", and clone unsets or overrides 
> > GIT_CONFIG, then your new repository will immediately be unusable, because 
> > clone will set up the config file inside the new repository, but nothing 
> > you run after that will look in the new repository, since everything else 
> > obeys the GIT_CONFIG you still have set.
> 
> Yes, I think an interactive environment that has GIT_CONFIG is
> simply misconfigured.
> 
> But on the other hand, I could well imagine a script that does
> this:
> 
> 	#!/bin/sh
> 	GIT_CONFIG=$elsewhere; export GIT_CONFIG
>         do things to the $elsewhere file via git-config
>         git clone $something $new
>         talk about the $new in the $elsewhere file via git-config
> 	(
>         	unset GIT_CONFIG ;# I am writing the script carefully!
> 		cd $new
>                 do something inside the clone
> 	)
>         talk more about the $new in the $elsewhere file via git-config
> 	exit

That seems counterintuitive to me. If you created $new with init instead 
of clone, entirely different things would happen. And any other git 
commands outside the subshell would behave oddly. (Actually, the first of 
these reminds me why I thought git-clone used the caller's $GIT_DIR: 
git-init does.)

quoted text
> > On the other hand, I don't see why any git command other than "git config" 
> > (run my the user directly) has any business looking at GIT_CONFIG, since 
> > it's only mentioned in the man page for git-config, and not in general for 
> > configuration, the wrapper, or other programs.
> 
> I think reading from the configuration file is done by
> everybody, and GIT_CONFIG affects where the information is read
> from.  Maybe it was a misfeature.  I dunno.

It makes sense that it would work that way, but the documentation should 
probably reflect that in config.txt.

	-Daniel
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