Re: Bug report: GIT_CONFIG and user.email/name

On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 07:10:27PM +0200, German Lashevich wrote:

I've faced an issue while trying to use a non-default .gitconfig file
via specifying
GIT_CONFIG environment variable.

What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)

# use custom .gitconfig via GIT_CONFIG envvar:
mkdir -p /tmp/git-test/repo
cat <<EOT > /tmp/git-test/.gitconfig
[user]
    name = John Doe
    email = john@doe.me
EOT
cd /tmp/git-test/repo
git init
export GIT_CONFIG=/tmp/git-test/.gitconfig
echo Hi > readme.txt
git add readme.txt
git commit -m 'Initial commit'

The GIT_CONFIG variable doesn't work that way. It is not a general
mechanism used by all of Git, but rather a specific feature of the
git-config program (and even there it is a historical wart; you should
use "git config --file" instead).

One of these variables is probably more helpful:

  $ man git | sed -n '/GLOBAL/,/^$/p'
  GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL, GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM
    Take the configuration from the given files instead from global or
    system-level configuration files. If GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM is set, the
    system config file defined at build time (usually /etc/gitconfig)
    will not be read. Likewise, if GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL is set, neither
    $HOME/.gitconfig nor $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config will be read. Can
    be set to /dev/null to skip reading configuration files of the
    respective level.

Note that they're new in v2.32.0.

-Peff