Re: Add configuration options for some commonly used command-line options

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Mar 19, 2017, 13:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20170319131845.tl6o3t2nwicj2rug@genre.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <vpqa88hlghm.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 11:15:33AM +0100, Matthieu Moy wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> I think the main problem is indeed "stop the users from shooting
> themselves in the foot". Many command-line options change the behavior
> completely so allowing users to enable them by default means allowing
> the users to change Git in such a way that scripts calling it are
> broken.
> 
> This also doesn't help when troublshouting an issue as these options are
> typically something set once and for all and which you forget about.
> This typically leads to discussion in Q&A forums like:
> 
> A: Can you run "git foo"?
> B: Here's the result: ...
> A: I don't understand, I can't reproduce here.
> 
> just because B has a CLI option enabled by default.
> 
> This is the same reasoning that leads Git to forbid aliasing an existing
> command to something else.
> 
> OTOH, we already have almost "enable such or such option by default"
> with aliases. People who always run "git am" with "-3" can write
> 
> [alias]
>         a3 = am -3
> 
> and just run "git a3".

I tend to agree here. At work, we have code that wants git status --porcelain to be empty. If a user added -b to all of their git status calls (to make -s output more helpful), that would break a lot of tooling. It's much better if they create an alias, since that doesn't affect automated tools.

I expect developers of things such as fugitive would dislike such a feature as well. I get the impression our existing config file options already make life difficult enough.

-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
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