Re: "git -c web.browser=w3m help -w help" still kicks firefox

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 12:01:27AM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> > Which does bring up one interesting boundary. If I run:
> > 
> >   git -c receive.denyDeletes=false git push
> > 
> > what should happen? Obviously with cross-server communication the
> > environment won't get passed. I am inclined to say that even for local
> > cases, receive-pack should clear the string.
> 
> Sticky.  I agree with you that that would follow the principle of
> least surprise.
> 
> On the other hand if I use
> 
> 	git push --receive-pack='git -c receive.denyDeletes=false receive-pack'
> 
> then I would expect it to work.  I don't think this is a security
> problem because I already could have set the remote $GIT_CONFIG just
> as easily.

Yeah, I think you are right. Anybody who was trying to cross a setuid
boundary with receive-pack is already screwed unless they are cleansing
the environment. And I would hope that any such cleansing would be
allow-known-good, so the new variable would be blocked along with
GIT_CONFIG.

So I doubt we are making anything worse, security-wise. I do think we
should still remove the variable in the local transport for the sake of
least surprise, and I agree that your example above should work.

-Peff