Re: Start deprecating "git-command" in favor of "git command"

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 1, 2007, 03:32 UTC
Message-ID: <7vsl8894tc.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.98.0706301955560.1172@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

Show 20 quoted lines

> On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> 
>> The current scripts that largely use "git-foo" do not have to be
>> changed.  Your --no-alias and Linus's "git - foo" would be a
>> "solution", but both require changes to the scripts
>
> No. I didn't (and wouldn't) _remove_ the "git-xyzzy" thing.
>
> I'm just saying that it should be considered a secondary thing, and we 
> should have the long-term *option* to remove it.
>
> And in order to do that, we should start removing our dependency on it 
> earlier rather than later.
>
> Your whole alias argument is bogus, since we don't _allow_ aliases to 
> override the command (as you yourself did admit).
>
> So changing the current scripts from using "git-xyzzy" to using "git 
> xyzzy" changes nothing at all - except it gives people the _option_ to 
> stop installing the git-* links if they don't want to.

People who do not want to have git-xyzzy in their PATH had that choice for eternity ("make gitexecdir=$(prefix)/libexec/git"); your patch is not needed to satisfy that.

What it buys us is that they do not have to have $(prefix)/libexec/git/git-xyzzy for all xyzzy that git.c knows about as built-ins (obviously non built-ins are still needed). I do see value in not cluttering $(prefix)/bin/ quite a lot, but does it matter if we have 140 links or 70 links (the differences are 70 or so built-ins we currently have) in $(prefix)/libexec/git?

I would not be objecting to it if this was about $(bindir).

> With my patch, it's a _choice_, rather than a straight-jacket.

But that is a different choice. Choice of having only 70 git-xyzzy in $(gitexecdir) vs having to have 140 (among which 70 are hardlinks).

Your patch _closes the door_ for us to implement overriding aliases later if we wanted to; we would need to go back to the scripts and say "git --no-alias xyzzy" again.