From: Dario Rodriguez <soft.d4rio@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:49:51 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] Fix for default pager
Message-ID: <AANLkTilvvpy4TBQF6g8boQL87FRB7kFDrVfYiHvOv6xu@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100608053507.GB15156@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 2:35 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> If you are downloading a binary, the package compiler should do one of
> two things:
>
>  1. indicate a package dependency on 'less'
>

but... git will be uninstalled if you happen to uninstall less.

>  2. set DEFAULT_PAGER to 'more' (or whatever is appropriate for your
>     system)
>

and I know it's a very nice fallback default, but you still depending
on the pager, and will display nothing and return 0 if 'more' fails to
execute.

Something needs to be changed... if the sane way is to keep default
pager (almost setting 'more') instead of auto-detection... then we
must say something to the user when the pager fails to execute. (*)
Actually 'git' display nothing... and returns 0.

> Yes, auto-detection means we can more flexibly "upgrade" to less when
> the package suddenly appears. But if you really care about your pager,
> why not just set $PAGER?
>

good point, I agree. But again, back to (*), we must correct
something... the other way is that if pager fails to execute, we
cannot simply return 0.

I could submit a patch for this, may be is a little bit better (or simpler).