Re: [PATCH] Let git-help prefer man-pages installed with this version of git

From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Dec 7, 2007, 12:38 UTC
Message-ID: <47593EB2.3020309@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <871w9y7mei.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>

Sergei Organov wrote:

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>

 >> Having written that, it is very tempting to further clarify the above:

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>>
>>     Usually, if a user has his own version of git and regularly uses it
>>     by having the non-system executable directory (e.g. $HOME/bin/git)
>>     early in his $PATH, its corresponding documentation would also be in
>>     a non-system documentation directory (e.g. $HOME/man) early in his
>>     $MANPATH, and this change is a no-op.  The only case this change
>>     matters is where the user installs his own git outside of his $PATH
>>     and $MANPATH, and explicitly runs his git executable
>>     (e.g. "$HOME/junk/git-1.5.4/bin/git diff").
> 
> First, I don't think you need to clarify like this. It is just
> implementation detail of git-help that it uses 'man', and thus
> implicitly relies on MANPATH. The essential thing has been already
> stated above: git-help should show correct documentation.
> 
> Second, the change is still useful even if user did put custom path to
> 'git' into its PATH, but didn't even thought of customizing
> MANPATH. Besides, a user could be entirely unaware of 'man' the utility.
>

The number of users in the entire world that are completely unaware of the 'man' utility but still manages to build git and install it in a non-default path can probably be counted on one hand of a 65 year old saw-mill worker.

I'm not sure if we're doing them a greater service by DWIMing this or by telling them about the 'man' utility.

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> 
>> How typical would that use be, to run your git executable by always
>> naming it by path without relying on $PATH environment variable?
> 
> To tell the truth, I'd prefer to just use -M option of man and don't
> rely on MANPATH at all, so that 'git help' will issue error if there is
> no documentation installed for this particular version of git.
>

Does "man -M" work everywhere, or is your patch opening a can of worms to get probably-not-needed functionality?

Otoh, you submitted a patch, so there are probably a few people out there that care about this. I'm not one of them, so I'll shut up now that my lunch is over ;-)

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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