From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 05:35:40 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH RESEND] Do not override LESS
Message-ID: <7vvdxs2t03.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1219407912-32085-1-git-send-email-mail@cup.kalibalik.dk>

Anders Melchiorsen <mail@cup.kalibalik.dk> writes:

> Passing options to "less" with the LESS environment variable can
> interfere with existing environment variables. There are at least two
> problems, as the following examples show:
>
> 1. Alice is using git with colors. Now she decides to set LESS=i for
> some reason. Suddenly, she sees codes in place of colors because LESS
> is no longer set automatically.
>
> 2. Bob sets GIT_PAGER="less -RS", but does not set LESS. Git sets
> LESS=FRSX before calling $GIT_PAGER. Now Bob wonders why his pager is
> not always paging, when he explicitly tried to clear the F option.

3. Christ has been happily using git with his PAGER set to "less".  He
   suddenly notices that output from git linewraps and the pager does not
   exit when showing a short output, and gets very unhappy.