Re: [PATCH v2] branch: do not fail a no-op --edit-desc

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Sep 30 2022, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> The end result is OK in that the configuration variable does not
>>> exist in the resulting repository, but we should do better, by using
>>> git_config_set_gently() and ignoring only the specific error that is
>>> returned when removing a missing configuration variable.
>> ...
>> I was curious to follow up on your suggestion in your 3rd paragraph, so
>> I tried implementing this in the config API, results below, if you're
>> interested in it assume my SOB.
>
> Did I make any suggestion?  I am assuming that what I left in the
> quote above is the paragraph you are referring to, and that is not a
> suggestion but a description of what the patch did, so I am puzzled.

I think I just misread "by using git_config_set_gently() and ignoring
only the specific error that is returned when removing a missing
configuration variable." as "an alternative of this might do this via
the config API"...

>> But, having done that I discovered that your code here has a bug,
>> admittedly a pretty obscure one. The CONFIG_NOTHING_SET flag on "set"
>> doesn't mean "nothing to set, because it's there already", it means
>> "either <that>, or the key is multi-value and I'm bailing out".
>
> Ah, OK, so in short, _gently() is still unusable to use for that.  I
> guess it means that the approach taken by v1 would be a better
> solution, then.

As you noted it's got a TOCTOU instead, so we might wipe away good
config entirely.

I think between the two I'd go with v2, bugs and all, it's pretty
unlikely that someone has two "description" entries.