Josh Triplett [off-list ref] writes:
ETC_GITCONFIG defaults to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig, so if you just set
prefix=/usr or prefix=/usr/local, you end up with a git that looks in
/usr/etc/gitconfig or /usr/local/etc/gitconfig. That seems rather suboptimal.
Use ifeq in the Makefile to set ETC_GITCONFIG=/etc/gitconfig unless the prefix
points to $HOME .
I personally have four installations of git under $HOME by
setting prefix to $HOME/git-{maint,master,next,pu}. I would
rather not see this to break, as I suspect there are other
people who depend on this behaviour.