Hi ZJ, On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 03:31:34PM +0200, Zeger-Jan van de Weg wrote: > When adding or updating configuration values using git-config, the > values could all be observed by different processes as these are passed > as arguments. In some environments all commands executed are also all > logged. When the value contains secrets, this is a side effect that > would be great to avoid. At GitLab we use Rugged/libgit2 to circumvent > this property[1]. > > The following patch allows a value to be set through stdin when the user > passes a `--stdin` flag. Interesting. I had thought some time ago about making an interactive line-oriented 'mode' for using 'git-config(1)', which would allow callers to add/delete/fetch multiple variables using only a single process. This would satisfy a more general use-case than yours: particularly my idea was grown out of wanting to specify or read many configuration entries at once when using a tool built around Git, such as Git LFS. I had not considered tying '--stdin' to the '--add' (implicit or not) mode of 'git-config(1)'. It is an interesting idea to be sure. On the one hand, it lends itself to other modes, such as '--get' combined with '--stdin', or '--unset' in the same fashion. One could imagine that each of these would take either a key/value-pair (in the case of '--add') or a set of key(s) (in the remaining cases). The most desirable aspect is that this would allow for a clear path to this series being picked up. On the other hand, tying '--stdin' to a particular mode of using 'git conifg' seems overly restrictive to me. If I am building a tool that wants to fetch some values in the configuration, and then add/unset others based on the results using only a single process, I don't think that a mode-based '--stdin' flag gets the job done. One happy medium that comes to mind is a new '--interactive' mode, which implies '--stdin' and would allow the above use-case, e.g.: $ git config --interactive <<\EOF get core.myval set core.foo bar unset core.baz EOF (An off-topic note is that it would be interesting to allow more fanciful options than 'get', e.g., 'get' with a '--type' specifier, or some such). I'm not sure if anyone actually wants to use 'git-config(1)' in this way, but I figured that I would at least share some things that I was thinking about when initially considering this proposal. > [1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly/blob/8ab5bd595984678838f3f09a96798b149e68a939/ruby/lib/gitlab/git/http_auth.rb#L14-15 > > Zeger-Jan van de Weg (1): > Git config allows value setting from stdin > > Documentation/git-config.txt | 5 ++++- > builtin/config.c | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++-- > t/t1300-config.sh | 11 +++++++++++ > 3 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) > > -- > 2.23.0 > Thanks, Taylor
