Re: [PATCH] Fix wrong xhtml option to highlight

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 27, 2011, 19:00 UTC
Message-ID: <7vvd1agoii.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1296092646.23506.10.camel@drew-northup.unet.maine.edu>

Drew Northup <drew.northup@maine.edu> writes:

Show 24 quoted lines

>> > diff --git a/gitweb/gitweb.perl b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
>> > index 1025c2f..b662420 100755
>> > --- a/gitweb/gitweb.perl
>> > +++ b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
>> > @@ -3468,7 +3468,7 @@ sub run_highlighter {
>> >  	close $fd;
>> >  	open $fd, quote_command(git_cmd(), "cat-file", "blob", $hash)." | ".
>> >  	          quote_command($highlight_bin).
>> > -	          " --xhtml --fragment --syntax $syntax |"
>> > +	          " -xhtml --fragment --syntax $syntax |"
>> 
>> Curious.
>> 
>> Does the command take double-dash for the fragment and syntax options but
>> a single dash for the xhtml option?  Really...
>> 
>> A few top hits returned by Google for "highlight manual page" tells me
>> otherwise.
>
> Certainly appears to be the case that "--xhtml" is the option in Ubuntu
> 10.04.1 LTS. 
>
> Jochen,
> Did you mean "-X" (which sets the same option)?

The current proposal is to drop --xhtml and let highlight default to HTML.

Honestly speaking, I don't like the approach very much; it would have been much better if highlight had a single way that is supported throughout its versions to specify the output format. But it appears that there isn't, and relying on and hoping for its default to stay HTML is the best we could do, if we plan to support highlight 2.4.something or older.

The copy of U10.04 I have has highlight 2.12, and according to its manual pages, -X, --xhtml, and --out-format=xhtml mean the same thing. HTML is the default.

The change-log at www.andre-simon.de indicates that --out-format has become the preferred method and the short options like -X and -H are not supported in recent versions (3.0 beta and newer).

But as Jakub mentioned, 2.4.5 did not have --output-format; it was only in 3.0 beta that -O was redefined to mean --output-format and in old versions the short option meant something else.

What a mess...

The next time we introduce a new dependency, we really should try hard to assess the stability and maturity of that dependency. In hindsight, I think "highlight" was probably a bit too premature to be depended upon.