Re: [PATCH] Rename {git- => git}remote-helpers.txt

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 1, 2013, 18:52 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr4kzamt7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20130201073352.GB970@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Right. So we have some that must be "gitfoo", and others that do not
> care. If we turned "githooks" into "git-hooks" and removed the "is it a
> command?" magic from "git help", then "git help hooks" would still find
> hooks. And likewise, "git help gitignore" would still find "gitignore".
> But you could no longer say "git help ignore" to find "gitignore".

Which I think is a good thing ;-)

> Which personally I am OK with. It is not a sensible thing to ask for;
> the concept is not "ignore", but rather "the gitignore file".

Yes, exactly.

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>   4. Replace the rename "gitfoo" above with a "see git-foo..." pointer.
>      Users of "git help foo" would not ever see this, but people who
>      have trained their fingers to type "man gitfoo" would, along with
>      anybody following an outdated HTML link.
>
>   5. Update internal references to "linkgit:gitfoo" to point to
>      "git-foo".
>
> Hmm. That really does not seem so bad. The biggest downside is the
> people who have to see the redirect made in step 4.

Yeah, I see that a show-stopper in the whole sequence.

This is one of the "if we had perfect knowledge we would have designed it this way, and we could still migrate our current system to that ideal, but it is dubious the difference between the current system and the ideal will outweigh the cost of migration" moment, isn't it?