Re: [PATCH 2/2] config/alias.txt: document alias accepting non-command first word

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jun 5, 2019, 12:37 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1906051434500.1775@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <13d9ddd3541e3815078c4853c6f7c25cddd89126.1559333840.git.liu.denton@gmail.com>

Hi Denton,

On Fri, 31 May 2019, Denton Liu wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> One can see that an alias that begins with a non-command first word,
> such as `loud-rebase = -c commit.verbose=true rebase`, is permitted.
> However, this isn't immediately obvious to users as alias instances
> typically begin with a command.
>
> Document the fact that an alias can begin with a non-command first word
> so that users will be able to discover that this is a feature.

You caught me.

Granted, back in 2006, when I introduced that feature, we were not *quite* as diligent about documenting new features as we are today (see 4ab243a944a6 (Allow an alias to start with "-p", 2006-07-24)).

I like your patch! Maybe you would like to mention `-p`, too, as a possible use case, as that was the original reason I introduced the feature? (To this day, the first thing I do on a new machine *right* after installing Git is to call `git config --global alias.ps '-p status'`)

I'd be fine with these two patches as-are, of course.

Thank you! Dscho

Show 29 quoted lines

>
> Signed-off-by: Denton Liu <liu.denton@gmail.com>
> ---
>  Documentation/config/alias.txt | 8 ++++++++
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/config/alias.txt b/Documentation/config/alias.txt
> index 5425449a50..f241f03ebe 100644
> --- a/Documentation/config/alias.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/config/alias.txt
> @@ -7,6 +7,14 @@ alias.*::
>  	spaces, the usual shell quoting and escaping is supported.
>  	A quote pair or a backslash can be used to quote them.
>  +
> +Note that the first word of an alias does not necessarily have to be a
> +command. It can be a command-line option that will be passed into the
> +invocation of `git`. In particular, this is useful when used with `-c`
> +to pass in one-time configurations. For example,
> +`loud-rebase = -c commit.verbose=true rebase` can be defined such that
> +running `git loud-merge` would be equivalent to
> +`git -c commit.verbose=true rebase`.
> ++
>  If the alias expansion is prefixed with an exclamation point,
>  it will be treated as a shell command.  For example, defining
>  `alias.new = !gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD`, the invocation
> --
> 2.22.0.rc1.169.g49223abbf8
>
>