Re: [PATCH 2/2] config: treat user and xdg config permission problems as errors

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 05:04:02PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Better to error out and ask the user to correct the problem.

This only affects the user and xdg config files, since the user
presumably has enough access to fix their permissions.  If the system
config file is unreadable, the best we can do is to warn about it so
the user knows to notify someone and get on with work in the meantime.

I'm on the fence about treating the systme config specially. On the one
hand, I see the convenience if somebody has a bogus /etc/gitconfig and
gets EPERM but can't fix it. On the other hand, if we get EIO, isn't
that a good indication that we would want to die?

For example, servers may depend on /etc/gitconfig to enforce security
policy (e.g., setting transfer.fsckObjects or receive.deny*). Perhaps
our default should be safe, and people can use GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM to
work around a broken machine.

-Peff