Re: [PATCH] Documentation: replace 'vi' for 'editor' to reflect build-time option

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 30, 2012, 00:55 UTC
Message-ID: <20120330005523.GA28519@burratino>
In-Reply-To: <20120330002543.2138.91961.reportbug@localhost6.localdomain6>

Hi Rodrigo,

Rodrigo Silva (MestreLion) wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> git-var(1) did not say that hardcoded fallback 'vi' may have been changed
> at build time. A user could be puzzled if 'nano' pops up even when none of the
> mentioned environment vars or config.editor are set.
>
> Ideally, the build system should be changed to reflect the chosen fallback
> editor when creating the man pages. Not sure if that is even possible though.

Good catch.

Filling in the blank at compile time would be possible, but I'm not convinced it's a good idea. Wouldn't the same user be just as puzzled when

  http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git-htmldocs.git;a=blob_plain;f=git-var.html

(or whatever page with a nicer URL arises to replace the old www.kernel.org/... pages) says the fallback is 'vi' and git behaves differently?

How about something like this?

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
---
Context: http://bugs.debian.org/666250

 Documentation/git-var.txt |    6 ++++--
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git i/Documentation/git-var.txt w/Documentation/git-var.txt
index 5317cc24..beef9e28 100644
--- i/Documentation/git-var.txt
+++ w/Documentation/git-var.txt
@@ -43,13 +43,15 @@ GIT_EDITOR::
     `$SOME_ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE`, `"C:\Program Files\Vim\gvim.exe"
     --nofork`.  The order of preference is the `$GIT_EDITOR`
     environment variable, then `core.editor` configuration, then
-    `$VISUAL`, then `$EDITOR`, and then finally 'vi'.
+    `$VISUAL`, then `$EDITOR`, and then the default chosen at compile
+    time, which is usually 'vi'.
 
 GIT_PAGER::
     Text viewer for use by git commands (e.g., 'less').  The value
     is meant to be interpreted by the shell.  The order of preference
     is the `$GIT_PAGER` environment variable, then `core.pager`
-    configuration, then `$PAGER`, and then finally 'less'.
+    configuration, then `$PAGER`, and then the default chosen at
+    compile time (usually 'less').
 
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