Re: config-file includes

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

Here's one solution I've given a little thought to. Comments welcome.

I've sometimes wanted an "include" mechanism in git config files.
Partially to just keep things tidier, partially to avoid
cutting-and-pasting between some repo-specific config, and partially
because I'd like a conditional inclusion mechanism[1]. I was thinking of
something that would be syntactically compatible but semantically
meaningless in current versions of git, like:

 [include]
 path = /some/file
 path = /some/other/file
 path = ~/some/file/in/your/homedir

You could extend this to look in refs, with something like:

 [include]
 ref = meta:config

which would resolve meta:config to a blob and examine it (i.e., it would
look at refs/heads/meta).

I had something similar [1], although I disregarded worktree content
completely. One thing about this meta thing is fsck/prune must dig in
config file in order not to accidentally remove something config file
refers to.

Another thing is, what if I want to exclude certain part of the included config?

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/163285/focus=163288

[1] I want conditional inclusion because sometimes the rules for config
   entries changes from version to version. For example, I have
   pager.diff set to a script in my ~/.gitconfig. But older versions of
   git don't understand non-boolean values and barf. I'd really like to
   do something like:

   [include-ifdef "has-pager-scripts"]
   path = ~/.gitconfig-pager

   where "has-pager-scripts" would be a magic flag compiled into git
   versions that understand that config.

But how far would you go with conditional expressions?
-- 
Duy