Re: categorization, documentation and packaging of "git core" commands

From: Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 7, 2018, 17:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20180207172902.GL1427@zaya.teonanacatl.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1802070801470.19185@android-a172fe96dd584b41>

Robert P. J. Day wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> first, here are the executables under /usr/libexec/git-core/ that
> are unreferenced by that web page, but that should be fine as almost
> all of them would be considered underlying helpers or utilities
> (except for things like git-subtree, but we're still unclear on its
> status, right?):

I don't think there's anything unclear about git subtree's status. It's in contrib/ within the source, so it's not part of the core git suite. Some distributions (Fedora being one of them) ship a git-subtree package to provide it for users who want it.

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> on the other hand (and this is not so much a git issue as a fedora
> packaging issue), there are a number of command links at that web page
> that are supplied by distinct RPM packages rather than by the basic
> fedora git package, so one would need to install the following
> packages to get some of those commands on fedora:
> 
>   * gitk
>   * git-cvs
>   * git-svn
>   * git-p4
>   * git-email (provides git-send-email)

These packages are in separate sub-packages in Fedora (and some other distributions) because they are no required by all users and they pull in dependencies which are not wanted on minimal installs. In Fedora, you can install git-all to get all the available git sub-packages.

> finally, from fedora, i am utterly unable to find a package that
> provides git-archimport. pretty sure fedora used to have a "git-arch"
> package but it's not there now.

It hasn't been in Fedora since 2011. The tla command which is required for git-archimport was retired, thus we removed the git-arch package. The rpm changelog shows this:

* Tue Jul 26 2011 Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com> - 1.7.6-4
- Drop git-arch on fedora >= 16, the tla package has been retired

As does the git history for the package:

    https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/git/c/3f0dc974fa

The tla package was retired because it failed to build for several releases:

    https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/tla/blob/master/f/dead.package

-- 
Todd
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Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a
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