Re: [PATCH] credential doc: make multiple-helper behavior more prominent (Re: [PATCH] clone: handle empty config values in -c)

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 05:30:10PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> > @@ -162,6 +152,16 @@ helper::
> >  	shell (so, for example, setting this to `foo --option=bar` will execute
> >  	`git credential-foo --option=bar` via the shell. See the manual of
> >  	specific helpers for examples of their use.
> > ++
> > +If there are multiple instances of the `credential.helper` configuration
> > +variable, each helper will be tried in turn, and may provide a username,
> > +password, or nothing. Once Git has acquired both a username and a
> > +password, no more helpers will be tried.
> > ++
> > +If `credential.helper` is configured to the empty string, this resets
> > +the helper list to empty (so you may override a helper set by a
> > +lower-priority config file by configuring the empty-string helper,
> 
> It's not necessarily obvious to a new user what "lower-priority" means.
> 
> Since this text is an example, maybe it should say something like "so,
> for example, you can override a helper set in /etc/gitconfig by
> configuring the empty-string helper followed by whatever set of
> helpers you would like in ~/.gitconfig".
> 
> That's orthogonal to this patch but it should be straightforward to
> roll in if it makes sense.

I'm not sure we want to get into explaining last-one-wins versus lists
versus list-resets for each option. The "FILES" section of git-config(1)
does cover this, though I could well believe it doesn't go into enough
detail or is too hard to find (my mind is sufficiently poisoned that it
all makes sense to me, but that says little about an average Git user).

The phrase "lower-priority config file" is used for push.gpgSign, too
(though there it really does seem like repeating things that are true
for all the config).

-Peff