Re: [PATCH v5 7/7] meson/Makefile: allow setting submodule encoding at build time

On Sat, Dec 06, 2025 at 07:52:13AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Adrian Ratiu [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

On Fri, 05 Dec 2025, Patrick Steinhardt [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 11:10:30PM +0200, Adrian Ratiu wrote:

quoted

Some users find it difficult to distribute repo config changes for
enabling extensions.submoduleEncoding, or to enable it by passing
the config via cmdline, so we add a build-time option which can
enable the extension for convenience.

Wouldn't it be more sensible to make this a runtime configuration key
that users can configure in their gitconfig?

The request I got from a combination of feedback from Junio, Aaron and
Josh is to avoid any kind of required user intervention or manual
migration, to find ways to automate the transition as much as possible.

How would that lead to build-time behaviour change, though?

Users in managed environments like $CORP can rely on /etc/gitconfig
or equivalents managed by their corp-eng, so I am having a hard time
imagining why we need anything more than an configuration variable
looked at runtime.

I guess you could kind of have both: make it a runtime configuration
key, but have its default depend on a build configuration. You could for
example auto-enable it in case `WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES` is enabled. But I
myself am not sure whether the latter would really be all that important
in the first place.

Patrick