Re: [PATCH v7 0/3] Conditional config include

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> For those following on the mailing list, there is some discussion at:
>
>   https://github.com/git/git/commit/484f78e46d00c6d35f20058671a8c76bb924fb33
>
> I think that is mostly focused around another failing in the
> error-handling of the config code, and that does not need to be
> addressed by this series (though of course I'd welcome any fixes).

Thanks.  Without a message like this, the list may have never known
about the discussion taken elsewhere.  I'd appreciate such a report
to appear on list the next time much earlier ;-)

When built with FREAD_READS_DIRECTORIES=Yes on Linux, the error in
the test can easily reproduce.

In early days of UNIX it was sometimes handy to be able to read the
bytes off of directory to "investigate", but we are not a filesystem
application, and I do not offhand see any reason why we should be
relying on being able to successfully fopen() a directory for
reading.  A FILE * successfully opened that just returns EOF when
read is totally useless for any purpose anyway.  

When the path to be opened from the end user (either from the
command line or in a configuration file) is a directory, it is
better to diagnose it as a user error, and if the path was computed
by our code, it may be a bug.

I am wondering if we should enable this on Linux, at least in
DEVELOPER builds but possibly even on the release builds, to catch
these problems more easily.