Re: [RFC] Identify where a Git config is defined

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 10:27:06AM +0100, Lars Schneider wrote:

> Using "git config --list" shows me all configs but sometimes I have a
> hard time to figure out where a certain config is defined. This is
> especially true on Windows as I found the system config in various
> places. I wonder if other people would find it useful to enable
> something like "git config --list --print-source" where every config
> value is printed with the file where it originates from.

We discussed this exact thing a while ago, and it looks like I started
on a patch, but didn't pursue it much further. There's some discussion
in there if you are interested in designing such a feature:

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/190027/focus=190267

It looks like I tweaked it at some point, and I've been carrying this in
my tree (rebasing forward and using it in my normal build):

  git fetch git://github.com/peff/git jk/config-sources

Feel free to use it as a starting point if that's helpful. I don't
recall offhand how close it is to ready.

> If I read the source correctly this would mean I would need to change
> "config_fn_t" to pass not only key and value but also the config
> source file in addition. Since "config_fn_t" is used in many places
> this would be a big change that probably is not worth the effort?!

There's a global struct for the current config file.  In the patches
above, I just added an accessor function. Hooray for single-threaded
programs.

> Alternatively I was thinking about "git config --print-source-files"
> to print all config files that Git would parse. This would already
> help to find the configs and would probably be a smaller change.

I think the "--sources" option is more useful, because it can show
included files, too.

-Peff