[RFC] Clean way to disable pager

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@imag.fr>
Date: Aug 19, 2007, 17:26 UTC
Message-ID: <vpq1wdz307k.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

Hi,

The man page for git documents the -p option to _enable_ the paginated output for git, which isn't very usefull since the commands that might actually need paging have it enabled by default.

What I can't find is a clean way to _disable_ the pager. A hacky way is to run "git whatever | cat", or "GIT_PAGER=cat git whatever". From the code, it seems that git doesn't even launch the pager if it's set to "cat".

I think that deserves an less-hacky, and documented way. I'd suggest a --no-pager, or --dont-paginate, that would do the opposite of -p as a global option for git.

Below is a patch that does this:

>From 2148c2564ca6480feaec9a9d091259032257918d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001

From: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 19:24:36 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Add and document a global --no-pager option for git.

To keep the change small, this is done by setting GIT_PAGER to "cat". I'd
prefer not using global/environment variables for that, but it would
require a complete refactoring of options handling in git.
---
 Documentation/git.txt |    6 +++++-
 git.c                 |    6 +++++-
 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index 8017997..707a756 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@ git - the stupid content tracker
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
 [verse]
-'git' [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate]
+'git' [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] 
+    [-p|--paginate] [--no-pager]
     [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE]
     [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]
 
@@ -103,6 +104,9 @@ OPTIONS
 -p|--paginate::
        Pipe all output into 'less' (or if set, $PAGER).
 
+--no-pager::
+       Do not pipe git output into a pager.
+
 --git-dir=<path>::
        Set the path to the repository. This can also be controlled by
        setting the GIT_DIR environment variable.
diff --git a/git.c b/git.c
index cab0e72..f280e7d 100644
--- a/git.c
+++ b/git.c
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 #include "quote.h"
 
 const char git_usage_string[] =
-       "git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]";
+       "git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate] [--no-pager] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE] [--help] COMMAND
 [ARGS]";                                                                                                                                                   
 
 static void prepend_to_path(const char *dir, int len)
 {
@@ -58,6 +58,10 @@ static int handle_options(const char*** argv, int* argc, int* envchanged)
                        }
                } else if (!strcmp(cmd, "-p") || !strcmp(cmd, "--paginate")) {
                        setup_pager();
+               } else if (!strcmp(cmd, "--no-pager")) {
+                       setenv("GIT_PAGER", "cat", 1);
+                       if (envchanged)
+                               *envchanged = 1;
                } else if (!strcmp(cmd, "--git-dir")) {
                        if (*argc < 2) {
                                fprintf(stderr, "No directory given for --git-dir.\n" );

-- 
1.5.3.rc0.64.gf4f4a-dirty



-- 
Matthieu