Re: [RFC/PATCH] Formatting variables in the documentation

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 26, 2016, 16:37 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqbn3sydvk.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160526162348.GA18210@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 09:18:17AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> >   1. Somebody produces a patch flipping the default. The patch is
>> >      trivial, but the commit message should tell why, and try to dig up
>> >      any possible problems we might see (e.g., why wasn't this the
>> >      default? Particular versions of tools? Some platforms?)
>> [...]
>> There was no particular "caveat" raised there to recommend against
>> using this on particular versions of tools or platforms.  It was
>> inertia that has kept the new optional feature "optional".
>
> Thanks for digging. That matches my recollection and the limited
> research I did more recently.

For completeness's sake I should point out that the discussion on the first thread did point out some version-dependent issues. But with 79c461d5 (docs: default to more modern toolset, 2010-11-19), we declared the problematic versions obsolete; I suspect that it is safe to assume that those who would be hurt by flipping the default would already be extinct after 6 years since then.

Show 10 quoted lines

>> >   2. Assuming no problems, Junio merges the patch to "next". We get
>> >      any reports of issues from people using "next" day-to-day.
>> 
>> So I can do these steps myself up to this point.  After waiting for
>> a few days to see if somebody else with better memory tells me what
>> I forgot, perhaps.
>
> OK. I was trying to see if (1) could be low-hanging fruit for any of the
> newcomers, but at this point it probably makes sense for you to just
> write the patch.

Leaving it as low-hanging fruit is actually a good idea.

I was thinking about flipping it in Meta/dodoc.sh, which would update the git-manpages.git repository whose mirrors are found at

    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-manpages.git/
    git://repo.or.cz/git-manpages.git/
    git://github.com/gitster/git-manpages.git/