Re: Patch Series v3 for "use the $( ... ) construct for command substitution"

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 4, 2014, 17:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20140404172946.GI6851@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CA+EOSBkF+hLOab0oJH7HuUb_KKn+1sgV_Lshwupgj-_yAAfmFw@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

Elia Pinto wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> This patch series contain the
>
>  use the $( ... ) construct for command substitution
>
> patches not already merged in ep/shell-command-substitution
> in the mantainer repository.

Thanks for working on this. The $() form is less error-prone than ``, so in that sense it can be worthwhile.

[...]

> Elia Pinto (140):

I admit I'm not excited to review these at all.

I wonder if it's possible to make the series easier to review. For example:

 * patch 0 makes preparatory changes to line wrapping or to avoid
   using `` some places to make an automatic transformation easier
 * patch 1 introduces a script to transform `` expressions to $()
   expressions
 * patch 2 just runs that script

If the script is "obviously correct" enough then there is no need to manually go through 140 files after that point.

If the only way to get this done is to actually manually review those 140 files, I just don't think it's worth it. The `` construct is not *that* bad. Another possible direction could be to add a tool to make sure git doesn't get any new uses of ``, to let the changes flow in at a manageable rate without too many cases of "one step forward, one step back".

Hope that helps, Jonathan