Re: [PATCH 2/6] Make 'git var GIT_PAGER' always print the configured pager

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 15, 2010, 05:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20100215050007.GE3336@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20100214115959.GB3499@progeny.tock>

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 05:59:59AM -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Scripted commands that want to use git’s configured pager know better
> than ‘git var’ does whether stdout is going to be a tty at the
> appropriate time.  Checking isatty(1) as git_pager() does now won’t
> cut it, since the output of git var itself is almost never a terminal.
> The symptom is that when used by humans, ‘git var GIT_PAGER’ behaves
> as it should, but when used by scripts, it always returns ‘cat’!
> 
> So avoid tricks with isatty() and just always print the configured
> pager.

I think this is the right thing to do. But isn't "git am" broken in the meantime, as it now always paginates (whereas before, it would never paginate)? You fix it later in the series, but is there any test breakage in the meantime (not rhetorical, I didn't actually check) that would hurt bisectability?

The same would go for "git svn", except that its pagination was also broken in other ways. :)

-Peff