Re: [PATCH] Introduce the GIT_HOME environment variable

Miklos Vajna [off-list ref] writes:

Honor $GIT_HOME that is favoured over $HOME,

I'd personally prefer obeying $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and read
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config (defaulting to $HOME/.config/git/config)
or something like this :

http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.6.html

It solves the same problem ("set on environment variable, and change
my whole Git config"), but

* It's a standard. It's really nice to be able to

cd ~/.config
ls

to see a user's configuration for many applications at a time, and

cd ~/.config
git init

to version-control it.

* It avoids hidden files. With $GIT_CONFIG, a user doing

cd $GIT_HOME
ls

sees nothing. I understand why $HOME/something config files are
hidden, but a config file stored in a separate directory shouldn't be
hidden (just like $GIT_DIR/config is not hidden).

-		const char *home = getenv("HOME");
+		const char *home = getenv("GIT_HOME");
+		if (!home)
+			home = getenv("HOME");

If you go this way, why not define

const char *getenv_home()
{
	const char *home = getenv("GIT_HOME");
	if (!home)
		home = getenv("HOME");
	return home;
}

?

(probably in git-compat-util.h)

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/