Re: [PATCH v9 2/5] bugreport: add tool to generate debugging info

> Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@google.com> writes:
>
> > This is the kind of stuff I really wanted to get straightened out by
> > sending the smaller changeset, so I'm glad to be having this
> > conversation (again, and hopefully for the last time).
>
> I actually have a suspicion that "git bugreport" that is spawned via
> "git" wrapper is a bad idea (in other words, /usr/bin/git-bug that
> is totally standalone may be better).

>
> The thing is, anything launched by "git" as its subcommand (be it
> standalone or builtin) sees an environment already modified by
> "git", so inspecting say "$PATH" from "git bugreport" (be it
> standalone or builtin) does not show what the end-user, who may be
> having trouble, actually has.  The mangling of $PATH alone happens
> to be simple and (we may think) we can easily reverse without losing
> bits, but there would probably other differences that we think is so
> subtle and insignificant, right now in this discussion without
> having actual end-user who is having trouble in front of us, that
> having "git" layer in between may hide from us.
>
> Having "git-bug" a totally separate tool, that does not even go
> through git.c::cmd_main(), would also allow (and force) us to treat
> "git" just like any system component on the end-users' system whose
> versions and configurations may affect the use of "git" by the end
> user.  The tool, instead of relying on git_version_string[] that is
> determined at the compile time, would ask "git version" just like
> the end-users would when asked by us "what version of git do you
> run?"  It also means that "git-bug" can be updated at different
> cadence and the mismatch of versions between it and "git" does not
> matter at all.
>
> Having said all that, after suggesting to make the tool even more
> distant from the remainder of the binary, quite honestly, I do not
> even want to see us wasting any more time on builtin/standalone at
> this point, and instead would like to see reports from the end-users
> produced by a lets-start-small version of the tool and measure how
> having the tool actually helps.
>
> Thanks.
>