Re: [PATCH 2/8] rm: support the --pathspec-from-file option

From: Alexandr Miloslavskiy <alexandr.miloslavskiy@syntevo.com>
Date: Feb 10, 2020, 14:46 UTC
Message-ID: <19ab18db-3149-02b1-41d8-7ddb42c3757d@syntevo.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqftg8a9fp.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

Sorry for late reply, I was on vacation. Now I'm back and ready to continue :)

Thanks for your review!

On 21.01.2020 20:36, Junio C Hamano wrote:

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>> Decisions taken for simplicity:
>> 1) It is not allowed to pass pathspec in both args and file.
>>
>> `if (!argc)` block was adapted to work with --pathspec-from-file. For
>> that, I also had to parse pathspec earlier. Now it happens before
>> `read_cache()` / `hold_locked_index()` / `setup_work_tree()`, which
>> sounds fine to me.
> 
> That is not an explanation nor justification.

I'm not exactly sure what are you suggesting. My best guess is that you want to remove "`if (!argc)` block was adapted" paragraph from commit message? I thought about it and it feels wrong to leave this change unexplained. Or are you suggesting to reword it? If so, please give a hint.

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>> In case of empty pathspec, there is now a clear error message instead
>> of showing usage.
> 
> Hmph, "git rm --pathspec-from-file=/dev/null" would say "nothing
> specified, nothing removed" and it makes perfect sense, but I am not
> sure "git rm" that gives the same message is better than the output
> by usage_with_options(builtin_rm_usage, builtin_rm_options).

What feels wrong to me is when I make a mistake and git just slams me with usage, and then it's up to me to figure what could be wrong. I myself struggled to find a mistake a couple times (in similar cases, not in this specific one) and didn't like the experience.

This could be a lot worse when there's no mistake, just the file was empty - but you already agreed that showing a new error message is reasonable with '--pathspec-from-file'.

Still, without '--pathspec-from-file', it should still be better to point to a specific error rather then "here's usage and try to find a difference". I have reworded the error message in V2 in hopes that it will be less controversial.

If you still don't like it, I will change it to only show the new error with '--pathspec-from-file'.

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>> +static int ignore_unmatch = 0, pathspec_file_nul = 0;
>> +static char *pathspec_from_file = NULL;
> 
> We may want to clean these "explicitly initialize to 0/NULL" up at
> some point.  The clean-up itself would not be in the scope of this
> patch, of course, but not making it worse is something this patch
> can do to help.

Changed in V2.