transport: add protocol policy config option

Previously the `GIT_ALLOW_PROTOCOL` environment variable was used to
specify a whitelist of protocols to be used in clone/fetch/push
commands.  This patch introduces new configuration options for more
fine-grained control for allowing/disallowing protocols.  This also has
the added benefit of allowing easier construction of a protocol
whitelist on systems where setting an environment variable is
non-trivial.

Now users can specify a policy to be used for each type of protocol via
the 'protocol.<name>.allow' config option.  A default policy for all
unconfigured protocols can be set with the 'protocol.allow' config
option.  If no user configured default is made git will allow known-safe
protocols (http, https, git, ssh, file), disallow known-dangerous
protocols (ext), and have a default policy of `user` for all other
protocols.

The supported policies are `always`, `never`, and `user`.  The `user`
policy can be used to configure a protocol to be usable when explicitly
used by a user, while disallowing it for commands which run
clone/fetch/push commands without direct user intervention (e.g.
recursive initialization of submodules).  Commands which can potentially
clone/fetch/push from untrusted repositories without user intervention
can export `GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER` with a value of '0' to prevent
protocols configured to the `user` policy from being used.

Fix remote-ext tests to use the new config to allow the ext
protocol to be tested.

Based on a patch by Jeff King <peff@peff.net>

Signed-off-by: Brandon Williams <bmwill@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 46 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index 8153336435..50d3d06ffa 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -2260,6 +2260,52 @@ pretty.<name>::
 	Note that an alias with the same name as a built-in format
 	will be silently ignored.
 
+protocol.allow::
+	If set, provide a user defined default policy for all protocols which
+	don't explicitly have a policy (`protocol.<name>.allow`).  By default,
+	if unset, known-safe protocols (http, https, git, ssh, file) have a
+	default policy of `always`, known-dangerous protocols (ext) have a
+	default policy of `never`, and all other protocols have a default
+	policy of `user`.  Supported policies:
++
+--
+
+* `always` - protocol is always able to be used.
+
+* `never` - protocol is never able to be used.
+
+* `user` - protocol is only able to be used when `GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER` is
+  either unset or has a value of 1.  This policy should be used when you want a
+  protocol to be directly usable by the user but don't want it used by commands which
+  execute clone/fetch/push commands without user input, e.g. recursive
+  submodule initialization.
+
+--
+
+protocol.<name>.allow::
+	Set a policy to be used by protocol `<name>` with clone/fetch/push
+	commands. See `protocol.allow` above for the available policies.
++
+The protocol names currently used by git are:
++
+--
+  - `file`: any local file-based path (including `file://` URLs,
+    or local paths)
+
+  - `git`: the anonymous git protocol over a direct TCP
+    connection (or proxy, if configured)
+
+  - `ssh`: git over ssh (including `host:path` syntax,
+    `ssh://`, etc).
+
+  - `http`: git over http, both "smart http" and "dumb http".
+    Note that this does _not_ include `https`; if you want to configure
+    both, you must do so individually.
+
+  - any external helpers are named by their protocol (e.g., use
+    `hg` to allow the `git-remote-hg` helper)
+--
+
 pull.ff::
 	By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when merging
 	a commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, the