Re: [PATCH v2] send-email: try to get fqdn by running hostname --fqdn on Linux and macOS

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 12, 2025, 17:34 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5xi5u401.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <PN3PR01MB9597D7CAABB0EEE93A5CC490B897A@PN3PR01MB9597.INDPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com> writes:

Show 21 quoted lines

>> On 12 May 2025, at 10:12 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> 
>> "Julian Swagemakers" <julian@swagemakers.org> writes:
>> 
>>> There are multiple implementations of the hostname command, and they
>>> don't all support `--fqdn`. For example this will not work on Alpine
>>> Linux as well as macOS.
>>> ...
>>> All seem to support `-f` though, maybe that would be the better option.
>> 
>> What makes me worried about such a proposed changes is if there are
>> implementations that takes `-f` but uses it to mean something
>> completely different from fqdn, and emits something that looks like
>> a hostname but is not.  At least an implementation that takes --fqdn
>> without erroring out would try to give what this code wants to find
>> out (or it is simply crazy), but -f does not feel specific enough.
>
> What we can do is use `hostname -f` for macOS, after all its the only darwin based
> OS used rn, and use hostname --fqdn for Linux.
>
> Although it still leaves out Alpine Linux.

As long as we record the reasoning behind our decision to use `-f`, with an explanation like "we can add a configuration to disable this if an odd platform implementation of `hostname -f` truly misbehaves" to suggest that we can, if needed, easily give an escape hatch if this change breaks existing users, I think it is OK to just use `-f`, which would be the simplest ;-)

Thanks.