Re: If you would write git from scratch now, what would you change?

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Nov 26, 2007, 17:11 UTC
Message-ID: <858x4l2apc.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
In-Reply-To: <200711252248.27904.jnareb@gmail.com>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

> If you would write git from scratch now, from the beginning, without
> concerns for backwards compatibility, what would you change, or what
> would you want to have changed?

Get rid of plumbing at the command line level. It is confusing to users, and command line arguments, exec calls and I/O streams are not efficient and reasonably typed mechanisms for the kind of operations done in plumbing. Instead using a good extensible portable scripting language (I consider Lua quite suitable in that regard, but it is conceivable that something with a native list type supporting easy sorts, merges and selections could be more efficient) and implementing plumbing in that or in C would have been preferable for creating the porcelain.

That would keep plumbing out of the hair of users and make it easier to cobble together extensions and variations with non-trivial internal dataflow.

Shell scripts have also proven to be a constant hassle with regard to portability and bugs (like underquoting).

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum