Gerrit 3.12 – PluginConfigFactory#getFromGerritConfig does not reload updated gerrit.config from disk

[Alexander Mazurov]

Hi Gerrit Experts,

I’m working with Gerrit 3.12 and noticed an inconsistency between the documentation and the actual behavior of plugin configuration loading.

In my plugin, I use:

```

import com.google.gerrit.server.config.PluginConfigFactory;

PluginConfig cfg =
    pluginConfigFactory.getFromGerritConfig("pluginname", true);

```

According to the documentation on plugin configuration, this should read the plugin configuration from the updated $SITE/etc/gerrit.config on disk. However, in practice it only returns the original values loaded during Gerrit startup.

Debugging findings

• The provider injected into PluginConfigFactory is CopyConfigModule, not GerritServerConfigProvider.
• CopyConfigModule works on a static snapshot of the config and does not re-read from disk.
• As a result, plugins cannot observe updates to gerrit.config unless Gerrit itself is restarted or an explicit reload mechanism is triggered.

This suggests that the documentation is misleading: PluginConfigFactory#getFromGerritConfig() does not read directly from disk.

Questions

1. How can a plugin obtain updated global configuration (gerrit.config) from disk?
   • The only option I’ve identified is listening to the reload-config event (via a @Listen annotated ReloadConfigListener) and then re-fetching values. Is this the intended/official solution?
2. Is the documentation outdated, or am I missing something?

• • PluginConfigFactory#getFromGerritConfig() relies on the provider bound in CopyConfigModule and no reading from the disk

Any clarification would be very helpful — especially whether there is an officially supported way for plugins to dynamically re-read gerrit.config, or whether relying on reload-config is the correct pattern.

Thank you,
Alexander