Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git for Windows 2.9.3

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 17, 2016, 15:29 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqeg5nbehc.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1608171507530.4924@virtualbox>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> And then your "git cat-file" patch can be upstreamed with the option
>> renamed to (or with an additional synonym) "--filters", which would make
>> things consistent.
>
> Right. I would like to ask for a `--smudge` synonym nevertheless, just
> because I already use this. On the other hand, it is early enough to tell
> everybody who knows about this feature to change their invocation (anybody
> who would know about `--smudge` would be in that 1% of users that have
> read the release notes, so most likely would read the next release notes,
> too).

It is OK if it were your private edition, but you end up hurting your users if you need to redo the feature differently.

That's the price of your using open source and taking a short-cut. Adding a "--smudge" synonym is spreading the same hurt to outside your fork. Let's see if we can avoid doing that. Perhaps mark that "--smudge" as experimental-and-subject-to-change and re-announce?