Re: [PATCH] connect: handle putty/plink also in GIT_SSH_COMMAND

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jan 25, 2017, 12:34 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1701251327090.3469@virtualbox>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqmvf0wc2h.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

Hi Junio,

On Mon, 9 Jan 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> IOW, "give an escape hatch to override auto-detected tortoiseplink and
> plink variables" suggestion should be taken as an "in addition to"
> suggestion (as opposed to an "instead of" suggestion).  I was not clear
> in my very first message, and I thought in my second and my third
> message I clarified it as such, but probably I wasn't explicit enough.

While you may not have been explicit enough, I was not smart enough.

That escape-hatch exists *already*. And it is exactly the thing that you mentioned earlier as a potential source of mis-identification.

Let's assume that you want to use a script for the GIT_SSH_COMMAND that eventually uses PuTTY, and you call this script "junio-is-a-superstar.sh". All plausible so far ;-)

Now, with the patch in question (without the follow-up, which I would like to ask you to ignore, just like you did so far), Git would not figure out that your script calls PuTTY eventually. The work-around? Easy:

	DUMMY=/plink.exe /path/to/junio-is-a-superstar.sh

In other words: the thing that we thought may be a problem is actually a feature.

Likewise, if your GIT_SSH_COMMAND looks like this:

	THIS_IS_NOT_ACTUALLY_PUTTY=/my/window/needs/putty my-ssh.sh

... you can easily change Git's mind by prefixing

	DUMMY=blubber

If you want to use a script that decides itself whether to call OpenSSH or PuTTY, Git should "stay dumb" about it, as it will not be able to tell beforehand whether a port argument should be passed via `-p` or `-P` anyway.

Of course, given our discussion I think all of this should be documented in the commit message as well as in the man page.

Do you agree this is a good direction to take?

Ciao, Johannes