Re: [PATCH 2/3] Allow isatty to be overriden with GIT_FORCE_TTY

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 6, 2021, 22:03 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqbl7fgkvu.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20210706210317.706313-3-me@avishay.dev>

Avishay Matayev <me@avishay.dev> writes:

> There are several behaviors where git will not attempt to do an action if a
> tty is not present, for example - `git_pager` (pager.c) will instruct git
> to not use the GIT_PAGER environment variable if stdout is not a pty.

In general, I am negative on this approach, even though I agree that the issue you are trying to solve is worth solving. "Force pretend that we are talking to a TTY" exposes too much of the internal logic in the implementation to the end users.

Often we use isatty() as an approximation for "are we being interactive?", and I wouldn't have as much problem as I have with the "FORCE_TTY" to an approach to give users a knob to tell us "do not use your logic to guess---I am telling you that we are interactive, so behave as such".