Re: [PATCH 7/8] Makefile: introduce SANE_TOOL_PATH for prepending required elements to PATH

> On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 06:36:15PM -0500, Brandon Casey wrote:
> 
>> From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
>>
>> Some platforms (like SunOS and family) have kept their common binaries at
>> some historical moment in time, and introduced new binaries with modern
>> features in a special location like /usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/ucb.  Some of the
>> features provided by these modern binaries are expected and required by git.
>> If the featureful binaries are not in the users path, then git could end up
>> using the less featureful binary and fail.
>>
>> So provide a mechanism to prepend elements to the users PATH at runtime so
>> the modern binaries will be found.
> 
> So this bit me already, and it's only been in next for a day. :) I
> _already_ have /usr/xpg4/bin in my PATH before /usr/bin, but with this
> patch, I get it stuck at the _beginning_ of my PATH automagically. Which
> overrides, against my wishes, the "even more sane than /usr/xpg4/bin"
> part of my PATH that comes at the beginning.
> 
> Specifically, I have "~peff/local/bin" at the beginning of my PATH which
> contains a 'vi' that points to vim. Running "git rebase -i" now puts
> /usr/xpg4/bin at the beginning of the PATH (before ~peff/local/bin),
> which means I end up running the crappy system vi instead. For bonus
> fun, "git commit" still runs the correct 'vi' because it doesn't happen
> to be implemented as a shell script.
> 
> Am I crazy for not having EDITOR=vim instead of EDITOR=vi? Perhaps. But
> I wanted to point out that tweaking the PATH behind the user's back does
> cause surprises in the real world.