Re: [PATCH] Invoke git-repo-config directly.

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

I think some historical background is in order.

We started without bindir vs execdir distinction but we wanted a way to someday migrate out of putting everything in bindir. As one part of the solution, "git" wrapper was invented, and as the result of that effort, some parts of the scripts, and lot of documentation pages and sample scripts, lost dashes.

Historically, git tools have always wanted everything git-* to be found on user's PATH, and we were alarmed to see 100+ git-* commands in /usr/bin. That's why "git" wrapper and GIT_EXEC_PATH environment were invented. People can have /usr/bin/git and no other git-* on their PATH, because that "git" knows where to find the rest of git-* commands. For that to work, the scripts should know where to find the rest -- and cleanest way is to run others via "git foo" form.

Consistency via s/git-foo/git foo/g _is_ the goal, but that kind of change interferes with the other patches that do the real work, and it is kind of boring, so nobody has done wholesale clean-up of all the scripts.

Invoking with the full path is not an option -- it makes building and testing-before-installing process too cumbersome. You are welcome to try and send in a patch to do that if (and only if) you volunteer to go the whole nine yards, but I have to warn you that that approach is something we have already considered and discarded, one reason why is because it makes the testsuite unworkable (testing needs to be done before installing).

If you want to use the other "git" (GNU interactive tools, which I once heard is changing its name to gitfm or something like that -- how nice of them -- but has it ever happened?), and if you want to have /usr/bin (which has that "git") and then /other/bin (which has on-topic "git") on your PATH, in that order, that would be a problem. Saying just "git" would invoke other "git" that does not know what to do.

If you can solve that without hardcoding the full path in our scripts, that would be ideal. But otherwise, especially with changing things back to "git-foo" form without making sure going backward in that way would not hinder the migration out of /usr/bin, then that creates more problems than it solves.

So that is why I said I would prefer dashless form.

I _think_ the simplest fix is to change the order of directories you list on your PATH so that "git" is found before GNU interactive tool, which is my impression that most people seem to do (many in fact do not have GNU interactive tool on their PATH anywhere).