Re: [GSoC RFC PATCH v2 4/7] repo-info: add the --allow-empty flag

From: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 23, 2025, 09:26 UTC
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZTCoc9vfeMrWxqU5psmbxGzW=B-QULeSR+uvF9kQi9WzQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1pre14ae.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Lucas Seiki Oshiro <lucasseikioshiro@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Add a flag --allow-empty, which will force the output data to be empty
>> when no field is requested.
>
> I still think we should flip the polarity of the option and give "--all"
> to iterate over all variables, and by default show nothing.
>

I thought the idea was that we would show a subset of the fields by default when no user input is provided. Which would mean we have the following:

  * `git repo-info` which would show a subset of all fields, giving
    important repository information.
  * `git repo-info --all` which would show all available fields.
  * `git repo-info <fields>` which would only show the requested fields.

With this context, I'm not entirely sure where '--allow-empty' fits in.

If this is/not the case, it would be nice to talk about this in more detail in the cover message and also in the individual patches.

This is also a good time to think about if we should make the default to not show anything as Junio mentioned.