@matheusbsbs / matheus-bagliano / commits / 54b24b1080

builtin/config: special-case retrieving colors without a key

Our documentation for git-config(1) has a section where it explains how to parse and use colors as Git would configure them. In order to get the ANSI color escape sequence to reset the colors to normal we recommend the following command: $ git config get --type=color --default="reset" "" This command is not supposed to parse any configuration keys. Instead, it is expected to parse the "reset" default value and turn it into a proper ANSI color escape sequence. It was reported though [1] that this command doesn't work: $ git config get --type=color --default="reset" "" error: key does not contain a section: This error was introduced in 4e51389000 (builtin/config: introduce "get" subcommand, 2024-05-06), where we introduced the "get" subcommand to retrieve configuration values. The preimage of that commit used `git config --get-color "" "reset"` instead, which still works. This use case is really quite specific to parsing colors, as it wouldn't make sense to give git-config(1) a default value and an empty config key only to return that default value unmodified. But with `--type=color` we don't return the value directly; we instead parse the value into an ANSI escape sequence. As such, we can easily special-case this one use case: - If the provided config key is empty; - the user is asking for a color code; and - the user has provided a default value, then we call `get_color()` directly. Do so to make the documented command work as expected. [1]: <aI+oQvQgnNtC6DVw@szeder.dev> Reported-by: SZEDER Gábor <szeder.dev@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Patrick Steinhardt committed Sep 22, 2025 at 15:06 UTC 54b24b108055d9ba4850706a8ed8ee53edf08e37

2 files changed +13

builtin/config.c

@@ -923,6 +923,8 @@ static int cmd_config_get(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix,

923

924 if (url)

925 ret = get_urlmatch(&location_opts, &display_opts, argv[0], url);

926 + else if (display_opts.type == TYPE_COLOR && !strlen(argv[0]) && display_opts.default_value)

927 + ret = get_color(&location_opts, "", display_opts.default_value);

928 else

929 ret = get_value(&location_opts, &display_opts, argv[0], value_pattern,

930 get_value_flags, flags);

t/t1300-config.sh

+11

@@ -1083,11 +1083,22 @@ test_expect_success 'get --type=color' '

1083 rm .git/config &&

1084 git config ${mode_set} foo.color "red" &&

1085 git config --get --type=color foo.color >actual.raw &&

1086 + git config get --type=color foo.color >actual-subcommand.raw &&

1087 + test_cmp actual.raw actual-subcommand.raw &&

1088 test_decode_color <actual.raw >actual &&

1089 echo "<RED>" >expect &&

1090 test_cmp expect actual

1091 '

1092

1093 +test_expect_success 'get --type=color with default value only' '

1094 + git config --get-color "" "red" >actual.raw &&

1095 + test_decode_color <actual.raw >actual &&

1096 + echo "<RED>" >expect &&

1097 + test_cmp expect actual &&

1098 + git config get --type=color --default="red" "" >actual-subcommand.raw &&

1099 + test_cmp actual.raw actual-subcommand.raw

1100 +'

1101 +

1102 test_expect_success 'set --type=color' '

1103 cat >expect <<\EOF &&

1104 [foo]