Re: Start deprecating "git-command" in favor of "git command"

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jul 1, 2007, 13:48 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0707011313580.4438@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <20070701082202.GB6093@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Hi,

On Sun, 1 Jul 2007, Jeff King wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 12:17:10PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> > So I am somewhat negative on this, unless there is a way for
> > scripts to say "Even though I say 'git foo', I do mean 'git foo'
> > not whatever the user has aliased".
> 
> I had submitted GIT_NOALIAS=1 patches a while back, but IIRC, the
> consensus was that it was a bit too ugly and fragile in concept.

I think it is not GIT_NOALIAS that is ugly and fragile in concept. It is the whole notion that you can define default parameters via aliases that is ugly and fragile.

The possibility to say

	git config alias.log '!rm -rf /home/peff'

on somebody _else's_ machine makes me go shudder.

And there's another thing. On some machines, rm is aliased to 'rm -i'. That's good, right? NO! It _forces_ me to either look at the aliases on that particular box, or alternatively (which is what I actually do), specify _exactly_ what I want (I never do "rm", I always do "rm -i" or "rm -f", or "git rm"). That's because the default behaviour is _different_ on _different_ boxes. Repeat after me: consistency is good, inconsistency is bad.

So, yes, I am glad we have the option of using GIT_NOALIAS (which I forgot until jasam had this idea on IRC, independently), but no, I'd like not to use it. Not because GIT_NOALIAS is ugly, but because individual overriding default behaviours via peculiar aliases is.

Ciao, Dscho