Git Environment Variables for Pathspecs, Refs, and Protocols

running `GIT_LITERAL_PATHSPECS=1 git log -- '*.c'` will search for commits that touch the path `*.c`, not any paths that the glob `*.c` matches. You might want this if you are feeding literal paths to Git (e.g., paths previously given to you by `git ls-tree`, `--raw` diff output, etc). `GIT_GLOB_PATHSPECS`:: Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as glob patterns (aka "glob" magic). `GIT_NOGLOB_PATHSPECS`:: Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as literal (aka "literal" magic). `GIT_ICASE_PATHSPECS`:: Setting this Boolean environment variable to true will cause Git to treat all pathspecs as case-insensitive. `GIT_NO_LAZY_FETCH`:: Setting this Boolean environment variable to true tells Git not to lazily fetch missing objects from the promisor remote on demand. `GIT_REFLOG_ACTION`:: When a ref is updated, reflog entries are created to keep track of the reason why the ref was updated (which is typically the name of the high-level command that updated the ref), in addition to the old and new values of the ref. A scripted Porcelain command can use set_reflog_action helper function in `git-sh-setup` to set its name to this variable when it is invoked as the top level command by the end user, to be recorded in the body of the reflog. `GIT_REF_PARANOIA`:: If this Boolean environment variable is set to false, ignore broken or badly named refs when iterating over lists of refs. Normally Git will try to include any such refs, which may cause some operations to fail. This is usually preferable, as potentially destructive operations (e.g., linkgit:git-prune[1]) are better off aborting rather than ignoring broken refs (and thus considering the history they point to as not worth saving). The default value is `1` (i.e., be paranoid about detecting and aborting all operations). You should not normally need to set this to `0`, but it may be useful when trying to salvage data from a corrupted repository. `GIT_COMMIT_GRAPH_PARANOIA`:: When loading a commit object from the commit-graph, Git performs an existence check on the object in the object database. This is done to avoid issues with stale commit-graphs that contain references to already-deleted commits, but comes with a performance penalty. + The default is "false", which disables the aforementioned behavior. Setting this to "true" enables the existence check so that stale commits will never be returned from the commit-graph at the cost of performance. `GIT_ALLOW_PROTOCOL`:: If set to a colon-separated list of protocols, behave as if `protocol.allow` is set to `never`, and each of the listed protocols has `protocol.<name>.allow` set to `always` (overriding any existing configuration). See the description of `protocol.allow` in linkgit:git-config[1] for more details. `GIT_PROTOCOL_FROM_USER`:: Set this Boolean environment variable to false to prevent protocols used by fetch/push/clone which are configured to the `user` state. This is useful to restrict recursive submodule initialization from an untrusted repository or for programs which feed potentially-untrusted URLS to git commands. See linkgit:git-config[1] for more details. `GIT_PROTOCOL`:: For internal use only. Used in handshaking the wire protocol. Contains a colon ':' separated list of keys with optional values '<key>[=<value>]'. Presence of unknown keys and values must be ignored. + Note that servers may need to be configured to allow this variable to pass over some transports. It will be propagated automatically when accessing local repositories (i.e., `file://` or a filesystem path), as well as over the `git://` protocol. For git-over-http, it should work automatically in most configurations, but see the discussion in linkgit:git-http-backend[1]. For git-over-ssh, the ssh server may need to be configured to allow clients to pass this variable (e.g., by using `AcceptEnv GIT_PROTOCOL`

This section of the Git documentation covers environment variables that customize pathspec behavior, reflog actions, and protocol settings, including variables for treating pathspecs as literals, globs, or case-insensitive, as well as variables for controlling reflog entries, commit graph paranoia, and protocol allowances.