Re: [RFC PATCH v3 00/12] several notes refs, post-rewrite, notes rewriting

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 21, 2010, 03:47 UTC
Message-ID: <7vhbpb2qsm.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <cover.1266703765.git.trast@student.ethz.ch>

Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Brief overview of changes since v2, with some inline questions about
> things that need to be settled:
>
> * new [1/12] "Support showing notes from more than one notes tree" that
>   teaches a "notes.displayRef" option which can glob for notes that
>   should be shown, and can be specified more than once.
>
>   - maybe we should default this to "refs/notes/*"?

Probably not.

I like the general direction in which this series is going, but a config that does not have any command line counterpart is a design mistake.

When adding a feature, always start from the command line option, and then add configuration mechanism purely as a convenience (so that users do not have to give the same option every time they run the command). By forcing yourself to stick to that design pattern, it is easier to ensure that any new feature can be disabled by people who do not want it from the command line.

> * new [12/12] "notes: add shorthand --ref to override GIT_NOTES_REF"

Hmm; if this will _always_ be limited to "git notes" command and no other commands will _ever_ learn a command line option to override what notes namespace to use in the future, then "--ref" is perfectly a good name. But otherwise, "git log --ref=notes/amlog" would look _very wrong_, and would end up being called "git log --notes-ref=notes/amlog" instead. When that happens, "git notes --ref=notes/amlog" would look inconsistent and people will complain, no?