Re: backwards compatibility, was Re: [PATCH v1 1/3] Introduce config variable "diff.primer"

From: Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 26, 2009, 19:49 UTC
Message-ID: <76718490901261149xfedc415j8f5dab677b90d693@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090126184829.GA27543@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

> But then you have that problem that the _user_ is stuck specifying "OK,
> turn on fancy features." And I don't relish the thought of typing "git
> diff -J" every time. :)

Well, this issue seems to come up every so often, so the idea would be:

- We're adding a mechanism for scripts to communicate that they need
plumbing context
- Start using it in your scripts when calling git if you rely on a
stable interface
- In the next major release, git may introduce changes to commands
which are not clearly plumbing if you haven't adopted the mechanism

Where mechanism could be a switch, environment variable, etc. Typically in a network API, the client and server have a way to negotiate the highest level each supports; that's missing from git, but seems like it would be useful.

j.

p.s. perhaps you'd prefer -P? :)