Re: RFC: Modernizing the contept of plumbing v.s. porcelain

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 14, 2020, 22:49 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq8sa0atpz.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <87v9d9wxwd.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

> I.e. the existing advice was to say "just use plumbing", now it takes a
> more nuanced view of e.g. pointing out that certin porcelain commands
> have "-z" options that can be considered as reliable as things
> explicitly marked as plumbing.

Yup, and we have --porcelain option to some commands that are meant to help Porcelain writers.

> It's widespread traditional wisdom when discussing git that there's
> plumbing and porcelain, but I think ever since all the builtins were
> shellscripts way-back-when this distinction has blurred.

Yeah, it is somewhat unfortunate that it is human nature to be excited by shiny new toys that are end results; some of the newer features we added and only available at the Porcelain level may be better made available to the plumbing, but that is one of the easiest corners authors can cut.

Show 10 quoted lines

>  2. Either inline at the bottom, or probably better in a new
>     gitplumbing(5) (or gitapi(5) or something) explain the nuance, that
>     some commads are pure-plumbing, some pure-porcelain, and some are
>     hybrids.
>
>     That you can follow some general rules (does it have "-z" output,
>     can probably be relied on) to determine "plumbing-like", or
>     porcelain-like (is it stdout/stderr output in English, does it
>     change under i18n?), that not all manpages might explicitly call out
>     plumbing / porcelain, and that when in doubt ask the list.

OK.