Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/5] stop installing old libexec aliases like "git-init"

From: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Nov 16, 2018, 16:00 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMy9T_EVh5Xa7wZFRSM+uGAKV7WSPRALRRaZhPaj_bg9v7Ohfg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <87k1ld1f51.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 11:38 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> [...]
> A follow-up on this: We should really fix this for other
> reasons. I.e. compile in some "this is stuff we ourselves think is in
> git".
>
> There's other manifestations of this, e.g.:
>
>     git-sizer --help # => shows you help
>     git sizer --help # => says it doesn't have a manpage
>
> Because we aren't aware that git-sizer is some external tool, and that
> we should route --help to it.

That would be nice. This has been an annoying for several tools named `git-foo` that I have worked on (e.g., git-sizer, git-imerge, git-when-merged, plus many internal tools).

Show 6 quoted lines

> Non-withstanding the arguable bug that things like git-sizer shouldn't
> be allowing themselves to be invoked by "git" like that without
> guaranteeing that it can consume all the options 'git' expects. When I
> had to deal with a similar problem in an external git-* command I was
> maintaining I simply made it an error to invoke it as "git mything"
> instead of "git-mything".

Hmmm, I always thought that it was intended and supported that an external tool can name itself `git-foo` so that it can be invoked as `git foo`.

Which git options do you think that such a tool should be expected to support? Many useful ones, like `-C <path>`, `--git-dir=<path>`, `--work-tree=<path>`, `-c <name>=<value>`, and `--no-replace-objects`, work pretty much for free if the external tool uses `git` to interact with the repository. I use such options regularly with external tools. IMO it would be a regression for these tools to refuse to run when invoked as, say, `git -C path/to/repo foo`.

Michael