On Monday, February 19, 2024 3:10 PM, brian m. carlson wrote: >On 2024-02-18 at 15:37:29, Dominik von Haller wrote: >> I have been playing around with the includeif from the .gitconfig. It did not work >for me at first, but after some help, I did get it to work. >> >> If you are curious. My Problem and what else was discussed here: >> https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/4823 >> >> Anyway. So, I was trying to access the email property which was set through an >includeif config. It did not work because I was in a non git directory. Yes, I do know >that the property set in includeif is named gitdir, but it was not obvious to me that >you need to be in a git tracked directory for it to work. >> >> I am trying to understand why it must be this way. Why does it not work in non git >tracked directories? > >The main reason it works this way is because the goal is to adjust configuration >based on the location of a repository. Thus, if I have `~/checkouts/work/` with my >work code and `~/checkouts/personal/` with my personal code, I can set options >that are appropriate in each case (e.g., `user.email`, `user.signingkey`, >`credential.helper`, etc.). > >Also, except for reading and writing with `git config`, the configuration is typically >not used unless you're in a repository. >There are only a handful of Git commands that don't use a repository at all, so >usually setting configuration outside of a repository isn't very useful. > >Note that if it didn't require a repository, then it would have to work on the current >working directory. But, it should be noted, the gitdir option specifically does not >operate on the current working directory. >While it is customary to have one's working directory be inside the repository, you >can be elsewhere and use `git -C` to change into the repository (internally, Git does >indeed change the working directory, but that's an implementation detail). > >That's not to say a feature couldn't be added that operated based on the current >working directory (or some related constraint) instead, but no such feature has >been added. I have considered contributing an "includewhere" option that would do that and differentiate from "includeif". I'm not sure it is required, and what would happen with symbolic links. Just a thought. --Randall
