From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:10:31 GMT
Subject: Re: allowing aliases to override builtins to support default options
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0903070407480.10279@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <76718490903061857y5446098by3633559697508c2e@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, Jay Soffian wrote:

> For example, what if:
> 
> 1. The aliases applied only to porcelain commands, not to plumbing.

Inconsistency like this is bad for a couple of reasons.  Just 3 out of 
them:

- it makes it hard for users to understand,

- it is prone for subtle breakages,

- the code will be complicated, and therefore ugly.

> 2. The aliases worked only if stdout was a terminal, using the same 
>    method that git uses for detecting when it is okay to start a pager.

This would be even more complicated to understand for the regular Git user 
who just wants to use the darned thing and not care about its internals.

> 3. git took --alias-builtins and --no-alias-builtins just like it takes 
>    --paginate and --no-pager to override (2).

And this makes it even more complicated.

I'd rather stay with our current notion that aliases cannot override Git 
programs.  This is _very_ easy to explain, and also _very_ easy to defend.

Ciao,
Dscho