Re: [PATCH v5 11/15] remote-testgit: make clear the 'done' feature

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 12, 2012, 15:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20121112154515.GB3546@elie.Belkin>
In-Reply-To: <EA56F0CC-7C93-491F-A076-4A1AA9593ED0@quendi.de>

Max Horn wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Aha, now I understand what this patch is about. So I would suggest
> this alternate commit message:
>
>   remote-testgit: make it explicit clear that we use the 'done' feature
>
>   Previously we relied on passing '--use-done-feature ' to git
>   fast-export, which is easy to miss when looking at this script.

I'm not immediately sure I agree this is even a problem. Is the point that other fast-import frontends do not have a --use-done-feature switch, so a typical remote helper has to do that work itself, and the sample "testgit" remote helper would be a more helpful example by doing that work itself?

The idea behind --use-done-feature is that if fast-export exits early for some reason and its output is going to a pipe then at least the stream will be malformed, making it easier to catch errors. So there is something to be weighed here: is it more important to illustrate how to make your fast-export tool's output prefix-free, or is it more important to illustrate how to work around a fast-export tool that doesn't support that feature? The answer is not immediately obvious to me. A good description could provide context to make it obvious.

Hoping that clarifies, Jonathan