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
On Tue, Jul 09, 2013 at 01:49:21PM +0200, Thomas Rast wrote:
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.
I'm not so sure. It is (in theory) OK to read the usual config files to
find out _how_ git-config should behave, but then return results from a
specific file. The former should read the "normal" files, and the latter
should read whatever is specified by the options ("--file", a specific
level like "--global", or the usual set of files).
There are probably not many config options that can affect git-config's
behavior. The few I can think of are:
1. core.editor should affect "git config --edit"
2. pager.config would auto-start a pager. I am not sure if that is a
sane thing to do or not.
3. In theory you could have advice.* affect git-config, but I do not
think any currently do.
4. Currently git-config does not read objects, but there are patches
proposed to do so. In that case, things like core.packedGitWindowSize
might be important.
So I think you could probably drop the config parsing, special-case (1),
and ignore (2) as silly. But I think (3) and (4) show that it isn't the
right thing to do; you will never know which config options affect
git-config's behavior in the future.
The real issue here is not the "extra" normal config parsing; it is that
the normal parsing does not work in some cases. And that has already
been fixed by Jonathan's 4698c8f (config: allow inaccessible
configuration under $HOME, 2013-04-12).
-Peff