Re: [PATCH v3] completion: add new _GIT_complete helper

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 5, 2012, 15:54 UTC
Message-ID: <20120505155423.GA14684@burratino>
In-Reply-To: <1336231400-6878-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras wrote:

> Since v3:
>
>  * Rename to _GIT_complete to follow bash completion "guidelines"
>  * Get rid of foo_wrap name

Thanks. Gábor, does the "all caps _GIT_ prefix for public API functions" convention look like one we should adopt? If I understand correctly, previously contrib/completion/git-completion.bash used leading double underscores for everything except completion functions, so this is a change.

Following a convention similar to the bash-completion project's proposed future convention doesn't really help compatibility. If we want to be able to include this function in that project without change some day, we'd have to call it _BC_git_complete. :)

I personally would be happier with a git_complete function provided by another script, like this:

	contrib/completion/git-completion.bash:

		__git_complete () {
			...
		}

	contrib/completion/bash-helpers.bash:

		git_complete () {
			__git_complete "$@"
		}

One might object that if the user includes bash-helpers.bash (name is just a strawman) in .bashrc for interactive shells because he is defining some custom completion functions,

	git<TAB>

would show the git_complete function. I think that's fine. Maybe the user would enjoy the reminder. git<TAB> also shows any dashed-form git commands that happen to be on the $PATH.

Please don't take this as a strong objection. Maybe the user-unfriendly version would be called _GIT_complete and someone interested can provide the friendly git_complete and git_ps1 wrappers separately, for example. I just think it is worth thinking carefully and being consistent about.

Hope that helps, Jonathan