Git for Windows Installer overwrites init.defaultBranch value in system gitconfig

[luhansen-ms]

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Setup

• Which version of Git for Windows are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

$ git --version --build-options

git version 2.41.0.windows.3
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 4a1821dfb0c2160a4fcc85d2845f095c54339578
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: /bin/sh
feature: fsmonitor--daemon

• Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

$ cmd.exe /c ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.1992]

Details

• Which terminal/shell are you running Git from? e.g Bash/CMD/PowerShell/other

CMD

• What commands did you run to trigger this issue? If you can provide a
  Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
  this will help us understand the issue.

# run this, or have Git installed as a prerequisite
.\Git-2.41.0.3-64-bit.exe /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES /VERYSILENT /NORESTART /NOCANCEL /SP- /CLOSEAPPLICATIONS /RESTARTAPPLICATIONS /COMPONENTS=assoc,assoc_sh /VSNOTICE=1 /o:PathOption=Cmd

# set init.defaultBranch to any custom value
git config --system init.defaultBranch mycustombranch

# this is the command that, when run, will override the value we just set for init.defaultBranch
.\Git-2.41.0.3-64-bit.exe /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES /VERYSILENT /NORESTART /NOCANCEL /SP- /CLOSEAPPLICATIONS /RESTARTAPPLICATIONS /COMPONENTS=assoc,assoc_sh /VSNOTICE=1 /o:PathOption=Cmd

• What did you expect to occur after running these commands?

The entries in C:\Program Files\Git\etc\gitconfig would not be modified.

• What actually happened instead?

init.defaultBranch was overridden by the installer to be master. It was previously set to be mycustombranch.

This problem is reproducible with the command line flags I included above to make the installation "silent", as well as using the GUI installer.

This seems to be related to this part of the installer flow:

I suspect this part of the installer flow should factor in whether or not this value is already set in the --system level gitconfig.

To my knowledge, no other properties (e.g. pull.rebase, core.autocrlf, mycustom.setting) were modified or overridden during the installation.