From: Linus Torvalds Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:29:41 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Move all dashed form git commands to libexecdir Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20071130005852.GA12224@coredump.intra.peff.net> On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Jeff King wrote: > > I thought Linus' point was that moving the subcommands was sufficient > for dealing with the consistency issue (i.e., all scripts would move to > "git foo" and only those people who really wanted to would put the > dashed forms in their path). Yes. I meant that we might as well keep all the git-xyz forms around, but _only_ in the libexec directory (and make sure that the libexec directory by default is *not* a binary directory), so that they'd normally not be visible. So then, people who want to use the old-fashioned git-xyz forms, because they just really hate white-space or whatever, could choose to do one of two things: - either just change the default libexec directory to be the same as the binary install directory, and have all the git-xyz things in the same place they've always been. - or just add $(gitlibexec) into their path. but the default (which is what 99% of all people use) would be to not show them. I also think that it makes sense to avoid wasting diskspace with duplicate files, so in situations where you don't have hardlinks, just don't install the git-xyz files at all by default (and again, maybe we can have a option to the installer to do it for people who really are very attached to the git-xyz format, and prefer to waste even a lot of disk on it) So I just think that the whole idiotic complaint that some people have (that whole "git-" shows "Display all 144 possibilities?" and people are somehow using that as an argument that git is "complex") should be something we strive to undo. I think the complaint is insane (because the answer is "well, nobody forces you to _use_ all the power and scripts we give you!"), but still, it's a complaint, so let's just assume the user is right, and try to fix it. So when you do "git-" it should just beep at you and not show anything at all by default. And when you do "git ", we should make sure that the bash expansion (or zsh or whatever) shows a nice collection of common plumbing, not soemthing really scary. Linus