From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Support "core.excludesfile = ~/.gitignore"
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:50:08 -0700
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Cc: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>, git@vger.kernel.org
To: Karl Chen <quarl@cs.berkeley.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <quack.20080826T2018.lthr68b2ljc@roar.cs.berkeley.edu> (Karl
 Chen's message of "Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:18:15 -0700")
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Karl Chen <quarl@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:

>>>>>> On 2008-08-26 17:25 PDT, Jeff King writes:
>
>     Jeff>   2. There is no documentation update.
>
> Relative paths and $ENVVARS would need explanation; not sure what
> needs to be said about ~user since the new behavior is what people
> expect to just work.  Would it go in git-config.txt if something
> were added?

Traditionally, we never has interpret ~/ or ~user/.  Users expected that
they need to spell it like:

        [core]
                excludesfile = "/home/joe/.my-ignore-pattern"

Especially since this is called "variables", it is natural, without
explanation, to expect this not to work, just like this use of a variable
won't work:

        $ EDITOR='~/bin/editor' ;# notice the single quote
        $ export EDITOR;
        $ git commit -a
        fatal: exec ~/bin/editor failed.

Your patch improves the situation and now allow:

        [core]
                excludesfile = "~/.my-ignore-pattern" 

If you do not document that it is now possible for this particular
configuration variable, the users will never know.