Re: The git spring cleanup challenge

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >>> [push]
> >>> 	default = simple
> >>
> >> This is the default, you don't need it.
> >
> > Yep, a remnant from the past.
> 
> This reminds me of something.
> 
> This particular remnant is there because the user was an early
> adopter from the days before the 'simple' setting was made the
> default, and it is a common pattern in our configuration variable
> settings.  We introduce a knob to allow early adopters to experience
> new settings, and after a while, one of them may become the default,
> and at that point, the setting the user has appears redundant.
> 
> If we had a central registry of configuration variables and their
> default values (there isn't one), one could write a configuration
> linter to point out "you have this set, but it is the default these
> days" to remind you, which sometimes may be useful.
> 
> I say "sometimes" because the reason why the user has a seemingly
> redundant setting may be because the default for the variable in
> question is planned to change, and the user has it set to keep the
> current default---the opposite of the 'early adopter' use case.

Long time ago I proposed a core.mode configuration that would be useful
for this predicament too [1].

When a configuration is planned to change, git_mode = MODE_NEXT would
make the new values the default.

Therefore the linter could do:

  git_mode = MODE_CURRENT;
  git_config_default_get.. &old_default);

  git_mode = MODE_NEXT;
  git_config_default_get.. &new_default);

If the values are the same, that means there's no plans to change the
default, and therefore it's safe to delete the configuration if the user
has the same value.

Cheers.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/1381561485-20252-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/

-- 
Felipe Contreras