Re: Collection of stgit issues and wishes

From: Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>
Date: Dec 17, 2006, 23:21 UTC
Message-ID: <20061217232113.GC16838@nan92-1-81-57-214-146.fbx.proxad.net>
In-Reply-To: <20061213110314.GA22670@diana.vm.bytemark.co.uk>

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 12:03:14PM +0100, Karl Hasselstr?m wrote:

> > > That approach can cause problems later on. If "stgit st" is
> > > currently a unique prefix of "stgit status", people might use it
> > > in scripts. Then, one day, you add the "stgit store" command, or
> > > whatever, and their scripts start breaking for no good reason.

Such shortcuts are *definitely* not for script writers.

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> > People who use abbreviations of commands in scripts ought to be
> > shot, not catered to, especially if they know this abbreviation is
> > automagically calculated.
> 
> Well, yes, but there's no reason to not shoot them _politely_ ...

At least we could shoot them when stdout is not a tty ? Not sure there is a good way of detecting if we're being run directly from an interactive shell.

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> I'd prefer hand-picked command abbreviations to reduce namespace
> clutter. That way, it's even possible to have "ambiguous" shortcuts --
> for example, "stg st" -> "stg status" even if "stg store" exists. And
> shortcuts that aren't prefixes, like "stg ua" -> "stg unapplied". And
> the user doesn't need to retrain her fingers just because a prefix
> gets ambiguous.

Sure, I'd hate having to type "stg sta" :)

Best regards,