Only use ETC_GITCONFIG=$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig ifeq ($(prefix),$(HOME))

ETC_GITCONFIG defaults to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig, so if you just set prefix=/usr or prefix=/usr/local, you end up with a git that looks in /usr/etc/gitconfig or /usr/local/etc/gitconfig. That seems rather suboptimal.

Use ifeq in the Makefile to set ETC_GITCONFIG=/etc/gitconfig unless the prefix points to $HOME .

The builder can always override ETC_GITCONFIG, so this just makes the default saner.

---
 Makefile |    6 +++++-
 1 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

index 65bd2db..6e1ae95 100644
@@ -141,7 +141,11 @@ prefix = $(HOME)
 bindir = $(prefix)/bin
 gitexecdir = $(bindir)
 template_dir = $(prefix)/share/git-core/templates/
-ETC_GITCONFIG = $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
+ifeq ($(prefix),$(HOME))
+ETC_GITCONFIG = $(HOME)/etc/gitconfig
+else
+ETC_GITCONFIG = /etc/gitconfig
+endif
 # DESTDIR=
 
 # default configuration for gitweb

1.5.1.1

I personally have four installations of git under $HOME by setting prefix to $HOME/git-{maint,master,next,pu}. I would rather not see this to break, as I suspect there are other people who depend on this behaviour.

I second that. :-)

$ cat config.mak
...
current_branch := \
	$(subst refs/heads/,,$(shell git-symbolic-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null))
ifeq ($(current_branch),)
	prefix := $(HOME)/sw/git-unknownbuild
else
	prefix := $(HOME)/sw/git-$(current_branch)
EOF

;-)

Shawn.

Also what happens to people who use "prefix=/usr/local"?

suboptimal.

Could it be better to set ETC_GITCONFIG=/etc/gitconfig /only/ if prefix is /usr?

These would possibly make all people who have git in /usr/local or in /opt/Git or in /home happier...

If I am not wrong, /usr is the only prefix, where, for historical reasons there is no /usr/etc but /etc is used. Having /usr/local/etc does not seem that bad. And /opt/Git/etc appears surely ok.

Sergio

Is this really necessary?

I personally think distro people (or anybody who configures git for system-wide deployment for that matter) already has Makefile wrapper (a la debian/rules) to take care of this and other issues.

So did I. Then I noticed (while stracing git to diagnose the issue with git-add searching the whole working copy for .gitignore files) that the Debian-packaged git looked for /usr/etc/gitconfig. See
<http://bugs.debian.org/420675>. Apparently few enough people use /etc/gitconfig that nobody noticed and reported that it didn't work. :)

Why not make the defaults more resistant to broken configuration?

- Josh Triplett

Hmm.

It's tempting to leave this as is to gauge which distribution has more competent package maintainer and which ones have sloppy ones ;-).

Sympathetic, but still not entirely convinced.

commit cc58fc0684396c5298b21c97f00a568e46224258
Merge: 8a13bec... 8565d2d...
Author: Junio C Hamano <[email protected]>
Date: Sat Feb 24 01:43:28 2007 -0800

Merge branch 'js/etc-config'

* js/etc-config:
Make tests independent of global config files
config: read system-wide defaults from /etc/gitconfig

Fairly recent feature, only a few Debian package releases have come out since then, and I strongly suspect that few people use /etc/gitconfig. I didn't even know it existed until the strace, and none of the other Git users I know use it.

It seems harder to make the mistake *now*, while looking at the Makefile to see what variables need setting, but it seems easy to have not noticed the necessary change for existing packaging.

Furthermore, people often forget the same thing with autofoo-based programs; --prefix=/usr or --prefix=/usr/local works for many programs (since a small fraction of autofoo-using programs have systemwide configuration, compared to all autoconf programs), and it seems easy enough to forget about --sysconfdir=/etc. Most of the time, however, the configuration file gets used more often, and often a default version exists that would get installed to the wrong place, so this mistake gets more readily noticed.

git does not install a default systemwide configuration file, and it does not attempt to create the target etc directory, making it easy to not notice the mistake. In order to notice, you would have to re-read the Makefile in detail, read the git-config manpage in detail (it shows up in no other documentation), read the source code, or notice a line in an strace. Or you would have to get a bugreport from someone using /etc/gitconfig, but again, few do.

Finally, more people install Git than just experienced and observant package maintainers. Random sysadmins install Git too (I know some of them), and making life easier for them seems like a good idea.

Overall, this seems like an easy change, with good benefits, and no drawbacks that I can see.

That said, I can see another way to make it slightly more forward-looking:
create a sysconfdir variable in Makefile, like the existing bindir and gitexecdir, and apply the appropriate logic to it instead. Then, any future configuration files can take advantage of the same logic.

Furthermore, I think my original logic may have a flaw in it: someone installing with prefix=$HOME/local (which I do for other software, though not Git because I use the Debian package) would likely expect $(prefix)/etc as well. For /usr/local, it can go either way; some people apparently do expect /usr/local/etc and some people expect /etc. Overall, someone installing in a strange nonstandard location probably wants $(prefix)/etc. So, I think the right logic for sysconfdir looks like:

ifeq ($(prefix),/usr)
sysconfdir=/etc
else
sysconfdir=$(prefix)/etc
endif

Personally, I wish automake and autoconf had exactly the same logic; it just makes sense.

- Josh Triplett

ETC_GITCONFIG defaults to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig, so if you just set prefix=/usr, you end up with a git that looks in /usr/etc/gitconfig, rather than /etc/gitconfig as specified by the FHS. Furthermore, setting ETC_GITCONFIG does not fix the paths to any future system-wide configuration files.

Factor out the path to the system-wide configuration directory into a variable sysconfdir, normally set to $(prefix)/etc, but set to /etc when prefix=/usr . This fixes the prefix=/usr problem for ETC_GITCONFIG, and allows centralized configuration of any future system-wide configuration files without requiring further action from package maintainers or other people building and installing git.

---
 Makefile |    9 +++++++--
 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

index 65bd2db..60c41fd 100644
@@ -141,7 +141,12 @@ prefix = $(HOME)
 bindir = $(prefix)/bin
 gitexecdir = $(bindir)
 template_dir = $(prefix)/share/git-core/templates/
-ETC_GITCONFIG = $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig
+ifeq ($(prefix),/usr)
+sysconfdir = /etc
+else
+sysconfdir = $(prefix)/etc
+endif
+ETC_GITCONFIG = $(sysconfdir)/gitconfig
 # DESTDIR=
 
 # default configuration for gitweb

@@ -160,7 +165,7 @@ GITWEB_FAVICON = git-favicon.png
 GITWEB_SITE_HEADER =
 GITWEB_SITE_FOOTER =
 
-export prefix bindir gitexecdir template_dir
+export prefix bindir gitexecdir template_dir sysconfdir
 
 CC = gcc
 AR = ar

1.5.1.1

I like this much better. Let's have this in 'maint' then.