Default system gitconfig skips LFS download

[mcfandw]

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

Reference #2140

Setup

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

$ git --version --build-options
git version 2.23.0.windows.1
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 4db2e5cc9e1522131a039cbad3970f147a39f0ce
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8

• Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?
  I've seen the same behavior on Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows 10 (64-bit).

$ cmd.exe /c ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]

• What options did you set as part of the installation? Or did you choose the
  defaults?

# One of the following:
> type "C:\Program Files\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
> type "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
> type "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Programs\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
$ cat /etc/install-options.txt
Editor Option: VIM
Custom Editor Path: 
Path Option: Cmd
SSH Option: OpenSSH
Tortoise Option: false
CURL Option: OpenSSL
CRLF Option: CRLFCommitAsIs
Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY
Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled
Use Credential Manager: Enabled
Enable Symlinks: Enabled
Enable Builtin Interactive Add: Enabled

• Any other interesting things about your environment that might be related
  to the issue you're seeing?

I first encountered this with git installed on my computers (tried multiple, Windows 7, Windows 10, etc.). I then found that the portable version of git exhibited the same thing, so that is probably an easier environment to reference, because it eliminates the variability of the installed configuration.

Details

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

Bash

• 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.

git clone <url>

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

In the past, I did "git clone " on a repository (hosted on Bitbucket in this case) which had LFS enabled, and git would download all the LFS binaries during the clone. As of version 2.23, it no longer downloads the LFS binaries when I clone the repository. Comparing portable git v2.23 with previous versions, I tracked the change in behavior to these settings in the --system config:

(mingw64/etc/gitconfig)

[filter "lfs"]
	clean = git-lfs clean -- %f
	smudge = git-lfs smudge --skip -- %f
	process = git-lfs filter-process --skip
	required = true

I confirmed that these are the settings active in my environment with:

$ git lfs env
git-lfs/2.8.0 (GitHub; windows amd64; go 1.12.2; git 30af66bb)
git version 2.23.0.windows.1
...
GIT_EXEC_PATH=C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/libexec/git-core
git config filter.lfs.process = "git-lfs filter-process --skip"
git config filter.lfs.smudge = "git-lfs smudge --skip -- %f"
git config filter.lfs.clean = "git-lfs clean -- %f"

I found that in prior versions the --skip flag was not present in this file. Eventually I stumbled across #2140 and 047ff72c3bbd74336321a279d585b72fb5c069ad, which appears to be when the --skip flag was added to the default settings. I found that by removing the --skip flag, or overriding these settings in my global gitconfig, git went back to the behavior I took for granted (automatically downloading the LFS binaries).
I see these same settings when I install git or use portable git, on multiple computers, so I don't think my system is broken. These settings appear to be what you get when you give LFS the --skip-smudge flag, and the documentation appears to confirm the behavior I see:

An additional option of --skip-smudge can be added to skip automatic downloading of objects on clone or pull. This requires a manual git lfs pull every time a new commit is checked out on your repository.

Can someone help me understand why these are the default settings? Is there an expectation that users should be doing more setup and configuration when dealing with LFS? (Like running git lfs fetch, git lfs pull or setting your own gitconfig settings to not include the --skip flag.) Like I said, I previously took for granted that everything just "worked" without any configuration or setup. Or is there something wrong with my repositories? (We have several that are similar, and this happens on all of them.)
I'm not an expert on LFS, so I'm struggling to understand how the settings affect things and why the defaults changed. I don't understand why they changed, but also don't know enough to claim they shouldn't have changed. Once I figured out what was going on, it wasn't difficult to change the behavior on my system. However, I've got a whole team of people using git on a repository with LFS, and I'm trying to figure out the best approach.

• What actually happened instead?

(See above)

• If the problem was occurring with a specific repository, can you provide the
  URL to that repository to help us with testing?

Not at this time.

[rimrul]

Ok, here's the rundown:

• In build-extra/commit/c0fb1e5 we the installer was changed to generate the config instead of copying a pre-made config file. The Git LFS configuration slipped through the cracks.

• In Git 2.21.0 Git LFS not working on a clean Windows Server 2019 installation #2140 a user noticed that Git LFS didn't work on clean installs anymore. @dscho searched out the config he thought we would set for Git LFS. I've looked through the Git LFS source code and found what I thought was the default configuration for Git LFS. It wasn't. I've missread it and found what git lfs install --skip-smudge generates.

• @dscho found the issue from build-extra/commit/c0fb1e5 and fixed it in build-extra/commit/729ba9d based on my missreading of the Git LFS source.

So in summary 2.21.0 accidentaly shipped no Git LFS config while 2.22.0 and 2.23.0 shipped with a broken Git LFS config due to my inability to read source code.

[mcfandw]

Thank you for the update! That's good to know. Does that mean the next version will potentially go back to pre-2.23.0 behavior of automatically downloading LFS binaries during clone?

Reading source code is hard, I had to have one of my coworkers look at your source code for me!

[rimrul]

Yes, I think so. I'll prepare a PR to get this fixed.

[dscho]

The next snapshot will have the fix.

[mcfandw]

Thank you all for your work on this and git-for-windows.