builtin/init-db: add environment variable for new repo hash

For the foreseeable future, SHA-1 will be the default algorithm for Git.
However, when running the testsuite, we want to be able to test an
arbitrary algorithm. It would be quite burdensome and very untidy to
have to specify the algorithm we'd like to test every time we
initialized a new repository somewhere in the testsuite, so add an
environment variable to allow us to specify the default hash algorithm
for Git.

This has the benefit that we can set it once for the entire testsuite
and not have to think about it. In the future, users can also use it to
set the default for their repositories if they would like to do so.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index b0672bd806..9d6769e95a 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -493,6 +493,12 @@ double-quotes and respecting backslash escapes. E.g., the value
 	details. This variable has lower precedence than other path
 	variables such as GIT_INDEX_FILE, GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY...
 
+`GIT_DEFAULT_HASH_ALGORITHM`::
+	If this variable is set, the default hash algorithm for new
+	repositories will be set to this value. This value is currently
+	ignored when cloning; the setting of the remote repository
+	is used instead. The default is "sha1".
+
 Git Commits
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
 `GIT_AUTHOR_NAME`::