Repository specific git commands

From: Ciprian Dorin Craciun <ciprian.craciun@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 7, 2008, 12:15 UTC
Message-ID: <8e04b5820801070415j5166c2eco53760cffe1ab1efb@mail.gmail.com>

    Hello all!

    I have a question / proposal: I see on the mailing list a lot of
situations when some commands (or group of commands) are very often
used and the users demand (or would like to have) a special "git xxx"
command for them. But adding such a command -- in almost all cases --
is not worth the effort or increases the number of available commands
(thus confusing even more the users).

    Thus the users are left with only two possibilities:
    -- either define an alias -- but usually it is very restrictive in
terms of what the alias can do;
    -- create a custom git command "git-xxx" and place it in the
executable path -- but this requires root access.
    (-- or write a custom script but this can not be invoked as "git xxx")
    => Thus neither option is very useful.

    So my proposal is to let the users create a special folder inside
the .git directory, for example ".git/bin" where they can place custom
built git files like "git-xxx", and when they issue "git xxx" this
folder is searched first, and if the command is found it will be
executed as any other "git-xxx".

    For this I attach a very simple patch that implements it. (It
modifies the execv_git_cmd function by adding a new path in the paths
array.)

    Comments? Opinions? Other solutions that I am not aware of?

    (Please note that I am a git user for only a couple of months, and
this is the first time I look over git source code...)

    Thanks,
    Ciprian Craciun.

diff --git a/exec_cmd.c b/exec_cmd.c
index 9b74ed2..9082711 100644
--- a/exec_cmd.c
+++ b/exec_cmd.c
@@ -30,11 +30,32 @@ const char *git_exec_path(void)
 }
 
 
+static const char *git_repo_exec_path(void)
+{
+	static char path_buffer[PATH_MAX + 1];
+	static char *path = NULL;
+	
+	if (!path) {
+		path = path_buffer;
+		path[0] = '\0';
+		if (get_git_dir()) {
+			strncat(path, get_git_dir(), PATH_MAX);
+			strncat(path, "/", PATH_MAX);
+			strncat(path, "bin", PATH_MAX);
+		}
+	}
+	
+	return path;
+}
+
+
 int execv_git_cmd(const char **argv)
 {
 	char git_command[PATH_MAX + 1];
 	int i;
-	const char *paths[] = { current_exec_path,
+	const char *paths[] = {
+				git_repo_exec_path(),
+				current_exec_path,
 				getenv(EXEC_PATH_ENVIRONMENT),
 				builtin_exec_path };