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Re: [PATCH] Add --info-path and --man-path options to git.

From
Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date
May 2, 2011, 05:15 UTC
Message-ID
<20110502051507.GB14547@elie>
In-Reply-To
<7vzkn5pxv5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Where is your unhappiness coming from?  Is this your argument?
>
>	'git help' allows distros' oversight with its -m and -i options;
>	it discourages distros to get their act together.

No, my discomfort was not on behalf of distros. It wouldn't do anything to help or hurt distros, since they would be installing to /usr/share/man.

When I said "installers' mistakes", I specifically meant the user that installs manual pages to ~/share/man without setting MANPATH to include that. I agreed that that's an unfortunate thing to happen to anybody, but I didn't think git is the right place to fix it. Because it affects anyone else installing something to $HOME, and as a user I wouldn't _expect_ git to fix it.

What my analysis was missing is that this is not only about the user who runs "git help -m" as a fancy way of running "man git" and expects it to work better (who I still have no sympathy for). It is much more about the user who runs

	git add --help

or chooses Help → Manual in her porcelain, who certainly deserves some documentation whether her MANPATH is set correctly or not.

I also should have remembered v1.5.4-rc0~54 (Let git-help prefer man-pages installed with this version of git, 2007-12-06), which is about showing the manual in /opt/git-next/man in preference to a stale manpage from /opt/git-master/man when running "/opt/git-next/bin/git add --help".

So I was very confused indeed. Sorry to waste your time, and thanks for setting me straight.

Previous: Junio C HamanoNext: Jonathan Nieder
Message 11 of 14 in “Add --info-path and --man-path options to git.”
  1. Add --info-path and --man-path options to git.Jon Seymour, May 1, 2011
  2. Junio C HamanoMay 1, 2011
  3. Jon SeymourMay 1, 2011
  4. Jonathan NiederMay 1, 2011
  5. Jonathan NiederMay 1, 2011
  6. Junio C HamanoMay 2, 2011
  7. Jon SeymourMay 2, 2011
  8. Jon SeymourMay 2, 2011
  9. Jonathan NiederMay 2, 2011
  10. Junio C HamanoMay 2, 2011
  11. Jonathan NiederMay 2, 2011
  12. Documentation: clarify meaning of --html-path, --man-path, and --info-pathJonathan Nieder, May 2, 2011
  13. Jon SeymourMay 2, 2011
  14. Junio C HamanoMay 2, 2011

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