Re: [PATCH] Make "git reset" a builtin. (incomplete)

From: Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com>
Date: Aug 23, 2007, 11:25 UTC
Message-ID: <3f4fd2640708230425h3cb793fbg17b09f561ede07ae@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <e1dab3980708230355x1d5d2febw6814e8f24d745ddd@mail.gmail.com>

On 23/08/07, David Tweed <david.tweed@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On 8/23/07, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> > (To accomodate those Windows users who for some silly reason refuse to
> > install Cygwin, bash, and perl on their Windows development box.  :-)
>
> I personally don't care exactly what's used implementing git on non-unix
> platforms, but I get nervous as more and more "layers" are added so
> it becomes more and more difficult to figure which layer a user problem
> is occurring at. If it looks to difficult to "help out with" issues on Windows,
> that would be a big enough reason for me not to use git on such projects.

This is one of the reasons I _suggested_ C# for the _Windows_ porcelian. That way, you have the git plumbing written in C, and the porcelain is implemented in supported tools for the target platform.

I don't mind what the porcelain is written in. However, standardizing on a single language improves the ability to target more people, especially as a shell, perl and python are not supported out of the box on Windows like they are on posix systems. This is important for some Windows developers and setting up build machines and the like (most, if not all, Windows users expect each application to be independant of anything else). It also reduces the surface area in which problems can occur.

Therefore, we come back to porting the stable scripts to "pure" C. Doing this for git-rebase _helped_ the Windows port. With a purely C implementation you have fewer places where problems can arise and platform issues can be dealt with in a unified way, instead of duplicating them in each script.

This does not prevent new commands from being prototyped in a scripting language. Nor does it prevent the user from running the commands in their own shell/perl/python scripts. It would limit the "bleeding edge" commands to posix platforms (including cygwin), until they are supported natively, but that would not hinder adoption of git on Windows platforms.

- Reece