On an initial install, the ./etc directory does not exist where git is installed. This causes git config --system to fail because the ./etc/config file cannot be created because of ENOENT. Is this deliberately intended for a specific security concern or would a patch to automatically create ./etc if it the directory does not exist be desired? It would need a stat("./etc".) call prior to attempting to create the ./etc/config file, with appropriate knobs, of course. If the build assumes the use of /etc instead of ./etc inside /usr/local, we probably do not want to do this. Curiously, Randall