On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 10:05:37AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > The subject says it all. Would it be bad if we introduce an > environment variable, GIT_SYSTEM_CONFIG=/etc/gitconfig, that names > an alternative location of the system-wide configuration file? > > That would supersede/deprecate GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM that we > introduced primarily so that we can run our tests without getting > affected by the configuration that happens to be effective on the > host that the test is being run. I can't think of a reason it would be bad. There shouldn't be a security question, as controlling the environment already lets you run arbitrary code, override system config variables, etc. I know when I was writing the tests for 0d44a2d (config: return configset value for current_config_ functions, 2016-05-26) I had to omit the "system" case, because we had no way of pointing at a specific file. So I do not know whether a runtime system config variable would be useful for users, but it would definitely make testing easier. -Peff