Re: [RFC PATCH 0/2] Conditional config includes based on remote URL

On Mon, Oct 25 2021, Jonathan Tan wrote:

quoted

I had some concerns about the specifics of the implementation/what
seemed to be tailoring it a bit too closely to one use-case[1][2], not
inherently with the idea (although I think e.g. for brian that more
closely reflects his thoughts).

Anyway, just saying that aside from this RFC I don't think we were at
the point of really fleshing out what this would look like, and there
being some hard "no", so I think that idea could still be pursued.

Which idea specifically do you think could still be pursued?

I meant the whole in-repo .gitconfig. I.e. to the extent that you're
submitting this as an alternative to that because of the negative
feedback on that RFC.

quoted

On this proposal: this also applies globally to all history, but I don't
have the same concern with that as the 1=1 mapping of remote-suggested
hooks, our path includes work that way, after all.

I think it would be nice if you could think about if/how this and the
"onbranch" include would work together though to serve the general case
better.

Also if you have a repo with N remotes each where "origin" tracks URLs
at git.example.com, and you add a "dev" tracking dev.example.com, will
the config apply if you're say on a branch tracking the "live" server,
if you've said "include this for repos matching dev.example.com?

Right now, the feature is only dependent on remote URLs configured
through remote.?.url. It wouldn't work with "onbranch" because there's
no way to combine conditions (and I have no plans to do that). I think
that if you have something that you want depending on which branch
you're on, you can just use the existing "onbranch" feature.

I mean with this and the below...

quoted

Arguably that's what you want, but perhaps something that those more
used to the centralized workflows wouldn't consider as being unintuitive
for users who might want to add this config only for their main "origin"
remote. We don't really have a way of marking that special-ness though,
except maybe checkout.defaultRemote.

What do you mean by adding a config for a specific remote?

...what happens if you add a google.com remote for a repository that
"lives" on github.com. I.e. are the semantics "match any remote", or
"match the 'primary' remote (origin?" etc.

quoted

I'm also still somewhat mystified at how this would better serve your
userbase than the path-based included, i.e. the selling point of the
remote-suggested configuration was that it would Just Work.

But for this the users would either need to setup the config themselves
for your remote, but that would be easier than pro-actively cloning in
"work" or whatever? I guess, just wondering if I'm missing something.

Or if it's a partly-automated system where some automation is dropping
in a /etc/gitconfig.d/google-remote-config-include 

Yes, the config is meant to be handled e.g. through a package manager
like apt. We don't want to prescribe directory structures like "work",
which is why the include is conditional upon the remote URL.

Even if the user pro-actively clones into "work", the user still needs
to set up the conditional config, so I don't see how that is a net
benefit.

Ah, that explains it. I assumed both cases would be ones where the user
would need to manually enable the 'configuration' (or cloning to a given
subdir).

quoted

I wonder if this
whole thing wouldn't be better for users with such special-needs if we
just supported an "early config hook".

i.e. similar to how we read trace2 config from /etc/gitconfig early, we
could start picking up a hook that just so happens to conform to the
config schema Emily's config-based hooks use.

So the /etc/gitconfig would have say:

    hook.ourConfigThingy.command=/usr/bin/googly-git-config
    hook.ourConfigThingy.event=include-config

That hook would just produce a config snippet to be included on STDOUT.

Since it's an arbitrary external command it would nicely get around any
chicken and egg problems in git itself, it could run "git remote -v",
inspect the equivalent of an "onbranch" etc. etc, then just dynamically
produce config-to-be-included.

I see that later on, you suggest an environment variable to guard
against recursion.

One thing is that if there are multiple such hooks, each one won't be
able to see what the other hooks have produced.

Yes, although aside from this hook that's a general caveat with the
proposed config-based hooks, I think if you need a hook that does that
(whether it's this, or pre-receive etc.) our answer is "put it in your
own wrapper".

If the feature you described already existed in Git, I think I could use
that, but if we're deciding between implementing the config hook you
describe versus something with more constraints, I think the one I
proposed is better for now. Some design points that have already been
discussed are whether setting a config during processing of an included
file would then invalidate the include and also the order of operations,
both of which would be much more difficult to control with config hooks.

I suggested it because maybe it would be a lot simpler, i.e. we don't
need such a feature to be aware of remote config at all, or having to
"read forward" to find it, maybe it would be more complex. I haven't
tried to implement it.

quoted

Please don't take this as some objection to your current proposal, just
a thought on something that might entirely bypass odd edge cases and
arbitrary limitations associated with doing this all in the "main"
process on-the-fly.

The special-ness with that one would need to be that we'd say it
wouldn't have the normal "last set wins" semantics, or maybe we could do
that and just note that we saw it, and execute the "include" when we
detect the end of the full config parsing (I'm not familiar enough with
those bits to say where that is).

The "last set" would be those set by the hooks, so yes, a user would
need to know to make their own hook in order to override anything set by
the hooks. The end of the full config parsing is in
config_with_options().

On the "user would need to know" that's the same if it's config? I.e. in
either case it would be in /etc/gitconfig or whatever shipped by the
*.deb package.

Anyway, I really just meant this as a suggestion, and one that might
make things simpler. If you don't think it makes sense...