Re: [PATCH] git-sh-setup: Restore sourcability from outside scripts

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 30, 2016, 21:12 UTC
Message-ID: <20161030211227.4gqovv7mt7mtnpy7@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <223121D101D844DEBF086AC40A5AF4CB@PhilipOakley>

On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 08:09:21PM -0000, Philip Oakley wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> > It is documented (Documentation/git-sh-setup.txt), and this is not the
> > internal Documentation/technical section of the documentation, so my
> > default assumption would be that everything shown there is intended as
> > public.  I only bring this up as a question because it was apparently
> > allowed to break.  If I’m wrong and it isn’t public, other patches are
> > needed (to the documentation and to its users in contrib).
> > 
> But the Documenation does say ::
> 
> - This is not a command the end user would want to run. Ever.
> 
> - This documentation is meant for people who are studying the Porcelain-ish
> scripts and/or are writing new ones.
> --

Historically speaking, porcelain-ish scripts were carried both in and out of git.git. These days what we consider porcelain is usually carried in-tree, but I don't think it's unreasonable for people building their own scripts to want to make use of git-sh-setup. And we've generally tried to retain backwards compatibility in the functions it provides, even to out-of-tree scripts.

So I think it is worth applying the fix at the start of this thread to keep that working.

As for a documentation change for "do not use this for out-of-tree scripts", I am mildly negative, as I don't think that matches historical practice.

-Peff