Re: [RFC/PATCH] shell: allow 'help' command to disable interactive shell

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 11, 2013, 07:22 UTC
Message-ID: <7v4nhjpb69.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAE_TNi=EG6vziVObJ-a__smeOv7RgZ5R146eonD6M828H7ziNQ@mail.gmail.com>

Ethan Reesor <firelizzard@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> For those who _do_ want to give customized commands to their users,
>> they can already have "help" script to give a friendly message.  It
>> just felt silly to force sites to create the directory only to
>> refuse an access to the "custom commands" feature, especially when
>> the existence of that directory is a signal that the site may want
>> to give its users an acess to that feature.
>
> Again, would it not be more elegant and powerful to A) have the
> shell-disabled message/hook/etc specified by git-config on some level,
> be it /etc/gitconfig or ~/.gitconfig, and B) have Jonathan's patch
> whereby ~/git-shell-commands/help returning non-zero closes the
> connection?

Isn't that what I have essentially been saying?

For sites that do not want per-user customizable "other commands", have a single site-wide hook instead of having to create otherwise empty shell-commands directories for all users. For users a site wants to allow customized commands, have the directory and custom "help" message. I do not care too deeply if "help" exiting non-zero caused the connection closed, but I care about not forcing a lot of effort to customize messages to people who do *not* need customizability.