Re: [RFC/PATCH] doc: git-foo was obsoleted several years ago

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 16, 2013, 21:38 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7gdc7v70.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1379763429-3443-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> So replace 'git-foo' with 'git foo'.
>
> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
> ---
>  Documentation/git-checkout.txt | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-commit.txt   | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-rebase.txt   | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-status.txt   | 4 ++--
>  4 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

Running

    $ head Documentaiton/git-c*.txt

shows that others e.g. git-cat-file.txt also begin with the same pattern, i.e. git-dashed-command(section) as the first header, and name section also lists the command in the dashed form, which makes one wonder why only these four are singled-out. It could have been "This is merely an RFC to show the kind fo things the submitter thinks we need to do; the real version, if list agrees that it is a good thing to do, would cover a lot more files.", but then it would have saved wasted time guessing if the message said so.

I recall that I wanted to see this change happen myself long time ago, and suspect that there may have been some reason that prevented us from doing so. I might have found that AsciiDoc back then did not like the input if the headline name "git-checkout(1)" did not match the filename "git-checkout.txt" and the command in the NAME section "git-checkout", or links "linkgit:git-checkout[1]" from other pages couldn't have SP there, or something silly like that.

Also doesn't our build infrastructure slurp the one-line description "git-checkout - Checkout a branch ..." from these files and expect a dash to be there?

In short, I personally do prefer to see dashless form at the top of the manpage, if it does not break other things, and there may need changes necessary to avoid breaking other things may to files other than these documentation-proper source files.

Show 17 quoted lines

> diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> index ca118ac..8d98383 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
> -git-checkout(1)
> +git checkout(1)
>  ===============
>  
>  NAME
>  ----
> -git-checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
> +git checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
>  
>  SYNOPSIS
>  --------
> ...