Re: RFC: Modernizing the contept of plumbing v.s. porcelain

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 10, 2020, 03:07 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s1bemXUC2wR-2X2-Pp+=OU-=UrMsSroCwqu5jZ0krAy0A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <878sa7xujm.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 5:02 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

>
> A lot of external guides and people's mental models of /usr/bin/git as a
> scriptable client reference the concept of plumbing & porcelain. Just
> one such example [1] prompted me to write this E-Mail.
>
> I've wondered if we shouldn't be updating this concept to reflect the
> reality on the ground in the git command ecosystem.
>
> I.e. if you look at "git help git"'s list of plumbing v.s. porcelain it
> makes no mention or distinction between those commands & functionalities
> that are truly transitory "porcelain". E.g. the specific error message a
> command might return, and those that are effectively plumbing. E.g. some
> "git config" functionality, "git init", the pretty formats in "git log"
> etc.
>
> I'm not quite sure what I'm proposing if anything, just putting out
> feelers to see if others think this documentary status quo has drifted
> from reality.

One option would be to split git into two binaries: "git" and "git-tool". Obviously the latter would be plumbing.

We could slowly move the documentation to git-tool and by doing so we could see that if a porcelain man page has too many links to git-tool documentation, that's some area of opportunity.

Every time you access a git-tool command inside git, it still would work, but you will get a warning: "you are using a plumbing command, use git-tool instead". Scripts could enable GIT_TOOL_MODE=1 if they are going to access many of these commands and don't want to s/git/git-tool/.

I would be a ton of work, but it's something I see value in doing.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras