Re: [PATCH 0/7] Restrict the usage of config_from_gitmodules()

[Brandon Williams <bmwill@google.com>]

On 06/22, Antonio Ospite wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> when I tried to reuse and extend 'config_from_gitmodules' in
> https://public-inbox.org/git/20180514105823.8378-2-ao2@ao2.it/ it was
> pointed out to me that special care is needed to make sure that this
> function does not get abused to bring in arbitrary configuration stored
> in the .gitmodules file, as the latter is meant only for submodule
> specific configuration.
> 
> So I thought that the function could be made private to better
> communicate that.
> 
> This is what this series is about.
> 
> Patch 1 moves 'config_from_gitmodules' to submodule-config.c
> 
> Patches 2 and 3 add helpers to handle special cases and avoid calling
> 'config_from_gitmodules' directly, which might set a bad example for
> future code.
> 
> Patch 4 makes the symbol private to discourage its use in code not
> related to submodules.
> 
> Patches 5 and 6 enable reusing 'config_from_gitmodules' when it's safe
> to do so.
> 
> Patches 7 is just a cleanup and I am not even sure it is worth it, so we
> might as well just drop it.
> 
> The series can be seen as a continuation of the changes from
> https://public-inbox.org/git/20170802194923.88239-1-bmwill@google.com/
> 
> Even though the helper functions may be less elegant than what was done
> back then, they should better protect from misuse of
> config_from_gitmodules.
> 
> A further change could be to print warning messages when the backward
> compatibility helpers find configuration in .gitmodules that should not
> belong there, but I'll leave that to someone else.
> 
> Thanks,
>    Antonio
> 
> P.S. I added Jeff King to CC as he has done some work related to
> .gitmodules recently, and I removed the vcsh poeple on this one.
> 

Thanks for working on this.  I think its a good approach and the end
result makes it much harder for arbitrary config to sneak back in to the
.gitmodules file.  And after this series it looks like you should be in
a good place to read the .gitmodules file from other places (not just in
the worktree).

As you've mentioned here I also agree we could do without the last patch
but I'll leave that up to you.  Other than a couple typos I found I
think this series looks good!  Thanks again for revisiting this.

-- 
Brandon Williams