Re: [PATCH/RFC] Fix for default pager

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 8, 2010, 05:35 UTC
Message-ID: <20100608053507.GB15156@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinydWk3GqGDww8FS7pmW16jAVazRkmT_GsRMIhy@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jun 07, 2010 at 11:14:58PM -0300, Dario Rodriguez wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Ben Walton <bwalton@artsci.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> >
> > Why not set a sensible DEFAULT_PAGER value for the system in your
> > config.mak file instead?
> >
> > Just curious.
> >
> 
> I was thinking about it before coding the patch, and found some
> consequences. First of all, the most important thing I should
> understand is that most users will install git from binary,
> precompiled packages instead of the good download and compile. So this
> is actually a good reason to not do it that way (config.mak)... Some
> users may download the compiled binary while it's actually calling
> it's default pager.

If you are downloading a binary, the package compiler should do one of two things:

  1. indicate a package dependency on 'less'

  2. set DEFAULT_PAGER to 'more' (or whatever is appropriate for your
     system)

Yes, auto-detection means we can more flexibly "upgrade" to less when the package suddenly appears. But if you really care about your pager, why not just set $PAGER?

The most important thing is that users who _don't_ care don't see something broken, but the rules above already cover that with current git.

Show 7 quoted lines

> But this is not the only reason. Let me give you an example: We
> develop (I'm actually working at Accenture) using several machines.
> When we need some tool, we compile it in our first machine, and
> install it for an specific user. In some other environments we cannot
> compile things (testing environments) so we transfer (FTP) those
> binary files. It's just another case, and the default pager could
> cause problems here (in fact, i experienced such problems).

Then set DEFAULT_PAGER to 'more' (or 'cat' for that matter), and use $PAGER on machines that are more capable.

-Peff