Re: Git --file doesn't override $HOME in version 1.8.1.2

Sarajärvi Tony [off-list ref] writes:

Using Ubuntu 13.04 with Git 1.8.1.2 I stumbled upon a problem using Puppet.

In Puppet we launch Git with the command: '/usr/bin/git config --file
/home/qt/.gitconfig --get "user.name" "Qt Continuous Integration
System"'
However, puppet logs: "fatal: unable to access '/root/.config/git/config': Permission denied".

Puppet is run as root, so HOME points to /root, but still -file should override the environment variable.

If the same command is run directly from terminal as root, it works as well.

To elaborate (I briefly talked to Sarajärvi on IRC): this isn't about
the fatal error; we downgraded this to a nonfatal error in 4698c8f
(config: allow inaccessible configuration under $HOME, 2013-04-12).

Rather, it's very strange that 'git config --file foo' tries to look at
any config file other than 'foo'.  In a git repo:

  $ strace git config --file fooconfig test.var 2>&1 | grep 'open.*config'
  open("/home/thomas/.gitconfig", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open(".git/config", O_RDONLY)           = 3
  open("/home/thomas/.gitconfig", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open(".git/config", O_RDONLY)           = 3
  open("fooconfig", O_RDONLY)             = 3

I haven't looked into the code yet.  Probably it's simply following the
usual code paths to discover a repo and read its config.  However, with
the --file option, it shouldn't.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch