Re: [PATCH] Use "-script" postfix for scripts

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Aug 12, 2005, 15:32 UTC
Message-ID: <7vwtmrxjbb.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0508121526050.25606@wgmdd8.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> For consistency reasons, the names of all scripts should end in "-script".
>
> This may be a bit controversial (people might find it unnecessary). 
> Subject to discussion.

I have never liked the original -script name convention. It only meant that they are implemented as scripts (as opposed to those on the $(PROG) Makefile variable), but the end users who end up typing their names from the command line, and to a lesser degree the people who use them in their scripts, should not care how they are implemented to begin with.

And to cope with long names and make things look a bit more familiar to CVS migrants, "git" wrapper was invented to supply the -script suffix to grok "git whatever", but just in case if something was _not_ implemented as a script, it ends up needing to try "git-whatever" in addition to "git-whatever-script". The patch alleviates the "git" problem for "git-whatchanged" and friends whose names currently do not end with -script, but it still does not help "git apply", for example. I like the general direction of making things consistent, but I wonder if we can become consistent by losing -script suffix, not adding to the ones that lack it.

And as you imply, this kind of change inevitable breaks people's scripts. But I do agree with you that we should do something about it, so it may be better to break them sooner rather than later, as long as we make sure we break them just once.