On Thu, Sep 11, 2025, at 15:24, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> 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
Okay. This is simple to find with a `color` search.
> ANSI color escape sequence to reset the colors to normal we recommend
> the following command:
>
> $ git config get --type=color --default="reset" ""
>
> What this command is supposed to do is to not parse any configuration
> key at all.
Or
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 with 4e51389000 (builtin/config: introduce
IMO s/with/in/ ?
> "get" subcommand, 2024-05-06), where we introduced the new "get"
nit: s/introduced the new/introduced the/
> subcommand to retrieve configuration values. The preimage of that commit
> used `git config --get-color "" "reset"` instead, which still works
> nowadays.
nit: s/still works nowadays/still works/
>
> This use case is really quite specific to parsing colors, as it wouldn't
s/use case/use-case/
> 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, but we instead parse the value into an
> ANSI escape sequence.
Two “but”? Maybe
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
s/use case/use-case/
Like special-case.
>
> 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 value, then we call `get_color()` directly. Do so to
> make the documented command work as expected.
In my opinion this is more difficult to read without an Oxford comma.
A bullet list could break up the serial comma and the comma used to
separate the “then” subclause.
use-case:
- if the provided config key is empty;
- the user is asking for a color code; and
- the user has provided a value,
then we ...
In any case: I think a colon generally means that semicolon will be used
instead of serial comma.
>
> [1]: <aI+oQvQgnNtC6DVw@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Reported-by: SZEDER Gábor <szeder.dev@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@xxxxxx>
>[snip too technical diff]
