Re: url.<base>.insteadOf vs. submodules

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 09:36:12AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

quoted

My gut feeling is that we should do the selective/filtered include
Peff mentioned when a repository is known to be used as a submodule
of somebody else.

Does the management of these submodue-related config values
become easier if, instead of placing them in .config, we
place them in a git/.context file?

Do you mean that Git users that use submodules adopt a convention
where a separate file in $GIT_DIR of the toplevel superproject holds
pieces of configuration that are meant to be shared between the
superproject and across all its submodules, and the $GIT_DIR/config
file in submodules and the superproject all include that shared one
via include.path mechanism?

That may allow us to do without being responsible for sifting of
configuration variables into safe and unsafe bins.

I dunno.

Hmm. I certainly like that we punt on having to decide on the "should
this be shared with submodules" decision. That makes the end result more
flexible, and we don't have to get into a never-ending stream of
"whitelist this config option" patches.

My only concern is that it's not as discoverable. In the situation that
kicked off this thread, somebody put url.X.insteadOf into their
super-project .git/config, expecting it to work in the submodules. That
_still_ wouldn't work with this proposal. They'd have to:

  1. Put it in .git/context (or whatever we call it)

  2. Maybe add include.path=context in .git/config if they want the
     config shared with the super-project (or this could be automatic?)

I guess it gives _a_ solution, which is more than we have now, but it
doesn't feel very ergonomic.

-Peff