Re: [PATCH/RFC] git.c: support "!!" aliases that do not move cwd

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Oct 7, 2016, 14:19 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1610071616390.35196@virtualbox>
In-Reply-To: <e1b432bc-97b4-15be-aa44-71921c64cd15@gmail.com>

Hi Kuba,

On Fri, 7 Oct 2016, Jakub Narębski wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> W dniu 07.10.2016 o 13:20, Johannes Schindelin pisze:
> > On Thu, 6 Oct 2016, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >> Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
> >>
> >>> Throwing something at the mailing list to see if anybody is
> >>> interested.
> >>>
> >>> Current '!' aliases move cwd to $GIT_WORK_TREE first, which could make
> >>> handling path arguments hard because they are relative to the original
> >>> cwd. We set GIT_PREFIX to work around it, but I still think it's more
> >>> natural to keep cwd where it is.
> >>>
> >>> We have a way to do that now after 441981b (git: simplify environment
> >>> save/restore logic - 2016-01-26). It's just a matter of choosing the
> >>> right syntax. I'm going with '!!'. I'm not very happy with it. But I
> >>> do like this type of alias.
> >>
> >> I do not know why you are not happy with the syntax, but I
> >> personally think it brilliant, both the idea and the preliminary
> >> clean-up that made this possible with a simple patch like this.
> > 
> > I guess he is not happy with it because "!!" is quite unintuitive a
> > construct. I know that *I* would have been puzzled by it, asking "What the
> > heck does this do?".
> 
> Well, "!" as a prefix is not intuitive either.

You do not use vi, do you? :-P

In vi, if you enter command mode (typing a colon) and then want to execute, say, `pwd`, you type !pwd<Enter>

> Perhaps "!.", because "." is current directory, and the "." command
> (that is, alias to "source") doesn't make sense in git aliases.

If you want to execute, say, `pwd` in the current directory, that would mean you want to write

	!.pwd

But that already means "execute `.pwd`"...

> Note that we would have to teach git completion about new syntax;
> or new configuration variable if we go that route.

Why would we? Git's completion does not expand aliases, it only completes the aliases' names, not their values.

Ciao, Dscho