Re: [PATCH] Documentation: replace 'vi' for 'editor' to reflect build-time option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 30, 2012, 16:46 UTC
Message-ID: <7viphmm3yd.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120330103326.272B040A067@cobalt.pobox.com>

Rodrigo Silva <linux@rodrigosilva.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> At 23:16 29/3/2012, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>>I've already rejected this patch once, but that was primarily because the
>>patch was not justified with the above "I read everybody else's git uses
>>'vi' on the Interweb, and even though my distro's manual page says it uses
>>'nano', I didn't bother to read it." scenario.
>
> @Jonathan: I'm really sorry for this confusion...
> ... Junio suggested me to send this patch to
> Debian, that's why I filled the bug in Debian BTS. It was meant to be a
> Debian-only patch.

It is a Debian package bug that the git_*.diff patch they use to customize the upstream source ends up making a resulting binary to use different editor and pager but does so without editing Documentation/ files to match the description to what their executable does. The resulting package is not self consistent.

But we aren't making it particularly easy for Debian to do so.

The debian/rules (the Makefile that invokes our Makefile) file in the git_*.diff patch merely overrides DEFAULT_EDITOR and DEFAULT_PAGER, instead of patching editor.c and pager.c to replace the fallback hardcoded defaults "vi" and "less". But these Makefile variables only affect that goes in the executable, and they do not affect the documentation.

So in the shorter term, I think Jonathan's patch would be OK for me to carry in my tree, but even in that case I think Debian still needs to replace the "vi/less" in the documentation to tell what they chosen for their users.

In the longer term, it may make more sense to let these Makefile variables replace "vi" and "less" with whatever values set to them, while keeping the "default chosen at the build time, usually" wording.

In any case, I'd appreciate it if either of you can turn Jonathan's "How about something like this?" into the final version to be fed to "git am".

Thanks.