Re: [PATCH 2/9] for-each-ref: clarify interaction of --omit-empty & --count

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
Date: Nov 8, 2023, 10:00 UTC
Message-ID: <674aa6c8-ccc7-4120-a864-57cce657f6a9@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAFaJEquUBYUO=scjHw2qrUyP-4wZJWtdmWAtRrW0mH9x9PbZZw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Nov 8, 2023, at 08:53, Øystein Walle wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Tue, 7 Nov 2023 at 20:30, Victoria Dye <vdye@github.com> wrote:
>
>> Since the interaction isn't clearly defined at the moment, we could probably
>> still update it to work like you're describing here. I'm happy to drop this
>> patch and implement your recommendation in a follow-up series. Let me know
>> what you think!
>
> Regardless of whether the logic is changed in a follow-up series or not
> I think the current behavior is worth documenting even if it doesn't
> exist for much longer in the tree. So I am favor of having this patch as
> part of this series.

The funny thing though is that once it’s documented then you also kind of commit yourself to it, right? That it’s how it’s supposed to behave.[1] If you instead change the behavior (to the correct one) and document it in the same series then there is no in-between time when people can claim to rely on it via the documentation.

[1] Modulo “subject to change” hedging, but it seems that even
    experimental commands who are documented as that are now resistant to
    change in practice.