Re: [PATCH] alias: restore support for simple dotted aliases
On Sat, Apr 25, 2026 at 07:29:16PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
Show 14 quoted lines
> On Sat, Apr 25, 2026 at 11:57:24AM +0200, Jonatan Holmgren wrote:
>
> > That is a challenge we are going to have to consider. I think reserving
> > `command` is a worthwhile compromise, but obviously we cannot do that for
> > arbitrary future keys such as `help`, `hidden`, etc.
>
> We don't necessarily have to reserve them. When we see alias.foo.bar, we
> could consider it as both alias "foo.bar" and the "bar" key of alias
> "foo", without regard to what is in "bar" (i.e., whether it is "command"
> or "help", etc). I.e., don't "fall back" but allow two overlapping
> namespace.s
>
> That is the most backwards-compatible thing we could do, but does create
> some interesting situations.
For reference, I mean something like this:
diff --git a/alias.c b/alias.c
index ec9833dd30..07c6bd3645 100644
--- a/alias.c
+++ b/alias.c
@@ -34,16 +34,20 @@ static int config_alias_cb(const char *var, const char *value,
if (subsection && !subsection_len)
subsection = NULL;
- if (subsection && strcmp(key, "command"))
- return 0;
-
if (data->alias) {
int match;
if (subsection)
- match = (strlen(data->alias) == subsection_len &&
- !strncmp(data->alias, subsection,
- subsection_len));
+ /*
+ * alias.foo.command always matches "foo", but for
+ * historical compatibility also match alias.foo.bar as
+ * "foo.bar", even when "bar" is "command" or any other
+ * key we happen to know about.
+ */
+ match = (!strcmp(key, "command") &&
+ strlen(data->alias) == subsection_len &&
+ !strncmp(data->alias, subsection, subsection_len))
+ || !strcmp(data->alias, subsection);
else
match = !strcasecmp(data->alias, key);
@@ -59,8 +63,23 @@ static int config_alias_cb(const char *var, const char *value,
return config_error_nonbool(var);
if (subsection)
+ /*
+ * If it's not alias.foo.command, then either it's a
+ * historical alias (git "foo.bar"), or it's some
+ * metadata not support yet by this version
+ * ("alias.foo.help" or similar).
+ *
+ * We'll guess it's the former and include the whole
+ * "foo.bar" in the list.
+ *
+ * We might want to suppress duplicates when we see both
+ * alias.foo.command and alias.foo.help, since that's
+ * what a hypothetical future version might understand.
+ */
item = string_list_append_nodup(data->list,
- xmemdupz(subsection, subsection_len));
+ !strcmp(key, "command")
+ ? xmemdupz(subsection, subsection_len)
+ : xstrdup(subsection));
else
item = string_list_append(data->list, key);
item->util = xstrdup(value);
-Peff
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>