On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 11:43:32AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > I have two doubts, while appreciating the overall direction to > clarify things very much. > > * "single overrides, multiple appends" is not a wrong explanation > per-se, but sounds like an arbitrary rule that forces people to > memorize. I wonder if it makes it less burdensome for readers if > we just said "Git acts as if the given configuration is specified > at the very end of the configuration files"---once the reader > understands that Git reads all configuration varilables of the > same name and the code paths that *use* one of them pick the one > defined the last, it is easy to realize that "single overrides" > is merely a natural consequence of the appending nature of "-c". Yeah, I think the problem is really not one of "-c" in particular. If you did: git config --system remote.magic.url some-default to provide a universal alias for the "magic" remote, you could not override it via ~/.gitconfig or .git/config, for the same reasons. I think we need a better discussion of multivar versus "normal" overridable variables in config.txt, and then "-c" can make a note that this is a potential issue, and refer readers to the right section. I also think it would be nice to have a syntax to "reset" multivars to their initial state (both from config files and from "-c"). Their inability to be overridden is one of the reasons we have so few of them. > * The last sentence added, i.e. "insteadof"-style, will not be > understood by any reader other than those who tried to use "-c" > on remote.*.url variables and does not belong here. A better > way/place to give that information is needed. Agreed. I think that could go in the discussion I mentioned above (as "some variables have other mechanisms to accomplish the same thing, like..."). But if we learned a mechanism for resetting multivars, such workarounds would not be needed at all. -Peff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html