config: allow overriding of global and system configuration

In order to have git run in a fully controlled environment without any
misconfiguration, it may be desirable for users or scripts to override
global- and system-level configuration files. We already have a way of
doing this, which is to unset both HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment
variables and to set `GIT_CONFIG_NOGLOBAL=true`. This is quite kludgy,
and unsetting the first two variables likely has an impact on other
executables spawned by such a script.

The obvious way to fix this would be to introduce `GIT_CONFIG_NOGLOBAL`
as an equivalent to `GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM`. But in the past, it has
turned out that this design is inflexible: we cannot test system-level
parsing of the git configuration in our test harness because there is no
way to change its location, so all tests run with `GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM`
set.

Instead of doing the same mistake with `GIT_CONFIG_NOGLOBAL`, introduce
two new variables `GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL` and `GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM`:

    - If unset, git continues to use the usual locations.

    - If set to a specific path, we skip reading the normal
      configuration files and instead take the path. By setting the path
      to `/dev/null`, no configuration will be loaded for the respective
      level.

This implements the usecase where we want to execute code in a sanitized
environment without any potential misconfigurations via `/dev/null`, but
is more flexible and allows for more usecases than simply adding
`GIT_CONFIG_NOGLOBAL`.

Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

4 files changed, 115 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-config.txt b/Documentation/git-config.txt
index 4b4cc5c5e8..5cddadafd2 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-config.txt
@@ -340,6 +340,11 @@ GIT_CONFIG::
 	Using the "--global" option forces this to ~/.gitconfig. Using the
 	"--system" option forces this to $(prefix)/etc/gitconfig.
 
+GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL::
+GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM::
+	Take the configuration from the given files instead from global or
+	system-level configuration. See linkgit:git[1] for details.
+
 GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM::
 	Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide
 	$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig file. See linkgit:git[1] for details.
diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index 3a9c44987f..380422a6a9 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -670,6 +670,16 @@ for further details.
 	If this environment variable is set to `0`, git will not prompt
 	on the terminal (e.g., when asking for HTTP authentication).
 
+`GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL`::
+`GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM`::
+	Take the configuration from the given files instead from global or
+	system-level configuration files. If `GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM` is set, the
+	system config file defined at build time (usually `/etc/gitconfig`)
+	will not be read. Likewise, if `GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL` is set, neither
+	`$HOME/.gitconfig` nor `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config` will be read. Can
+	be set to `/dev/null` to skip reading configuration files of the
+	respective level.
+
 `GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM`::
 	Whether to skip reading settings from the system-wide
 	`$(prefix)/etc/gitconfig` file.  This environment variable can
diff --git a/config.c b/config.c
index 8900d96cb6..8d4dbe1310 100644
--- a/config.c
+++ b/config.c
@@ -1846,13 +1846,24 @@ static int git_config_from_blob_ref(config_fn_t fn,
 
 char *git_system_config(void)
 {
+	char *system_config = xstrdup_or_null(getenv("GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM"));
+	if (system_config)
+		return system_config;
 	return system_path(ETC_GITCONFIG);
 }
 
-void git_global_config(char **user_config, char **xdg_config)
+void git_global_config(char **user_out, char **xdg_out)
 {
-	*user_config = expand_user_path("~/.gitconfig", 0);
-	*xdg_config = xdg_config_home("config");
+	char *user_config = xstrdup_or_null(getenv("GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL"));
+	char *xdg_config = NULL;
+
+	if (!user_config) {
+		user_config = expand_user_path("~/.gitconfig", 0);
+		xdg_config = xdg_config_home("config");
+	}
+
+	*user_out = user_config;
+	*xdg_out = xdg_config;
 }
 
 /*
diff --git a/t/t1300-config.sh b/t/t1300-config.sh
index e0dd5d65ce..0f92dfe6fb 100755
--- a/t/t1300-config.sh
+++ b/t/t1300-config.sh
@@ -2059,6 +2059,92 @@ test_expect_success '--show-scope with --show-origin' '
 	test_cmp expect output
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'override global and system config' '
+	test_when_finished rm -f "$HOME"/.config/git &&
+
+	cat >"$HOME"/.gitconfig <<-EOF &&
+	[home]
+		config = true
+	EOF
+	mkdir -p "$HOME"/.config/git &&
+	cat >"$HOME"/.config/git/config <<-EOF &&
+	[xdg]
+		config = true
+	EOF
+	cat >.git/config <<-EOF &&
+	[local]
+		config = true
+	EOF
+	cat >custom-global-config <<-EOF &&
+	[global]
+		config = true
+	EOF
+	cat >custom-system-config <<-EOF &&
+	[system]
+		config = true
+	EOF
+
+	cat >expect <<-EOF &&
+	global	xdg.config=true
+	global	home.config=true
+	local	local.config=true
+	EOF
+	git config --show-scope --list >output &&
+	test_cmp expect output &&
+
+	sane_unset GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM &&
+
+	cat >expect <<-EOF &&
+	system	system.config=true
+	global	global.config=true
+	local	local.config=true
+	EOF
+	GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=custom-system-config GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=custom-global-config \
+		git config --show-scope --list >output &&
+	test_cmp expect output &&
+
+	cat >expect <<-EOF &&
+	local	local.config=true
+	EOF
+	GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=/dev/null GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=/dev/null git config --show-scope --list >output &&
+	test_cmp expect output
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'override global and system config with missing file' '
+	test_must_fail env GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=does-not-exist GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=/dev/null git config --global --list &&
+	test_must_fail env GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=/dev/null GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=does-not-exist git config --system --list &&
+	GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=does-not-exist GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=does-not-exist git version
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'system override has no effect with GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM' '
+	# `git config --system` has different semantics compared to other
+	# commands as it ignores GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM. We thus test whether the
+	# variable has an effect via a different proxy.
+	cat >alias-config <<-EOF &&
+	[alias]
+		hello-world = !echo "hello world"
+	EOF
+	test_must_fail env GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM=true GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=alias-config \
+		git hello-world &&
+	GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM=false GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=alias-config \
+		git hello-world >actual &&
+	echo "hello world" >expect &&
+	test_cmp expect actual
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'write to overridden global and system config' '
+	cat >expect <<EOF &&
+[config]
+	key = value
+EOF
+
+	GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL=write-to-global git config --global config.key value &&
+	test_cmp expect write-to-global &&
+
+	GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM=write-to-system git config --system config.key value &&
+	test_cmp expect write-to-system
+'
+
 for opt in --local --worktree
 do
 	test_expect_success "$opt requires a repo" '