Re: [PATCH 2/2] Add support for url aliases in config files

> On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Jay Soffian wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:47 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >  In either case, I think a good approach to take is to find a
> > >  wording that conveys the notion "I will use A to mean what some
> > >  other people might call B or C" unambiguously.
> > 
> > [url A]
> >   other_people_call_it = B
> >   other_people_call_it = C
> > 
> > [local_url A]
> >   external_url = B
> >   external_url = C
> 
> Well, realistically, what's really the use of this?
> 
> The only really sane use of this is the one that Daniel started out with: 
> you may have a "external" representation of a name, but for your own 
> purely local configuration reasons, you may want to map that name into 
> another one that works for you.
> 
> The reason may be some local protocol issue: let's say that you see all 
> these pointers to git://git.kernel.org/ flying around, because that is the 
> official home of the git repository itself, but you work at a company that 
> has a firewall that doesn't let git through. So you want to still *use* 
> those names that other people use, but you want to remap them through some 
> proxy server (or a local cache), or just to use ssh instead.
> 
> So it's generally *not* that it's an "alias" for another site, since it 
> isn't that in general - it may just be a very local configuration thing. 
> It's also not really that you would call it one thing and others would 
> call it another thing: you want to call it the *same* thing as others call 
> it, but you want to work around some specific site issue (or just use a 
> cache that is closer without having to think about it).
> 
> So I think it really boils down to the fact that you want to "rewrite" the 
> thing. Not aliases, not "also known as", but you're logically really 
> looking for something like 
> 
> 	[access "git://git.kernel.org/*"]
> 		proxy = proxy-program
> 		url = "ssh://master.kernel.org/*"
> 
> which admittedly looks rather strange too, but at the same time it does 
> make sense from a "what do we really want to do?" standpoint.
> 
> Of course, in this case Daniel didn't actually do that "proxy" part, but I 
> think the argument that we should try to make the config file syntax 
> describe what the user wants to do is still very true. So skip that 
> "proxy" part (maybe somebody wants to do that too some day), and leave the 
> 
> 	[access "original"]
> 		url = "rewritten"
> 
> kind of syntax.