Re: [PATCH] config: use GIT_CONFIG in git config sequence

[Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email>]

On 26/04/2020 01:16, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Mateusz Nowotyński <maxmati4@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Currently, there is no way to use config file other then ~/.gitconfig.
>> This can cause a problem, for example, when running tests of software that
>> depends on git. In such a case user's gitconfig may contain settings that
>> are incompatible with tests.
> While I can remotely imagine how an environment variable that
> overrides everything might be useful at times, we already use
> GIT_CONFIG environment for a different purpose, so even if such a
> feature were desirable, the name is already taken, and you'd want to
> hunt for another one.  Also, I do not think I'll take this patch if
> the justification were solely the above, as it is a solved problem,
> together with the use of GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM and GIT_ATTR_NOSYSTEM.

Mateusz: is there a discoverability/documentation issue for these extra
config settings (a better patch maybe there).
I know in the past (in another context) I had failed to appreciate that
these had been set so couldn't work out why some problems were occurring
for me when testing some ideas.
>
> Tests of a software that depends on git, and perhaps other things,
> will be affected in things under the testing user's home directory,
> and not just ~/.gitconfig file.  Providing stable environment to run
> in to your tests is a useful thing to do, but it is not a viable or
> a particularly smart strategy for doing so to tweak each and every
> software that your software may depend on, and your software itself,
> with a custom change like this patch.
>
> You can prepare a pretend-home directory for the use of your tests
> and point the environment variable $HOME to it while running your
> tests.  See how we do this in our test suite for inspiration---it
> all happens in t/test-lib.sh, I think.
>
> Thanks.
>
--
Philip