Re: I'd like to be able to know what git-push will do

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 22, 2009, 21:40 UTC
Message-ID: <20090622214032.GC19364@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090618212803.GA14486@cthulhu>

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 05:28:03PM -0400, Larry D'Anna wrote:

> I'd like to be able to call git-push --dry-run and process the result
> from a perl script, but there's a snag: what does "foobar -> foobar"
> mean?  foobar could be a tag or a branch.  In fact, it could be a
> branch on on side and a tag on the other!

Yeah, that output is really meant for human consumption.

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> I've tried duplicating the refspec processing in the perl script, but
> this approach is highly sub-optimal because the refspec parsing and
> matching is so complicated.  I would wind up duplicating a lot of
> functionality, and every time it changed in git my script would become
> broken.

Agreed.

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> Would you accept a patch that changes the behavior of git-push so that
> instead of
> 
>   $ git-push --dry-run  -v origin :
>   Pushing to ~/repos/bin
>   To ~/repos/bin
>    = [up to date]      master -> master
>   Everything up-to-date
>   
> It would print the full names like this (only if -v is used)
> 
>   $ git-push --dry-run  -v origin :
>   Pushing to ~/repos/bin
>   To ~/repos/bin
>    = [up to date]      refs/heads/master -> refs/heads/master
>   Everything up-to-date
> 
> Or, if you don't like changing the behavior of -v, would you accept a
> patch with a new option (perhaps --symbolic-full-name) that caused
> git-push to behave this way?

I think it would have to be a new option, as "-v" is really about something orthogonal. However, I actually think you are better off making a whole new output format for porcelain scripts to read. As I said, the current output is for human consumption, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it changing in the future (and it won't receive the same sort of deprecation treatment that an interface created for scripts would get).

In other words, something like:

  $ git push --dry-run --porcelain origin :
  =refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master

(the format is totally off the top of my head -- I haven't thought too long about what you might want to have in it).

-Peff