Re: [PATCH 1/2] color: downgrade "always" to "auto" only for on-disk configuration

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 13, 2017, 00:09 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqinfjykm2.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20171012123153.i265nun6pklw7kjg@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> ... Also
> as an aside, I think this patch means that:
>
>   git -c color.ui=always add -p
>
> is broken (as would a hypothetical "git --default-color=always add -p").
> That's sufficiently insane that I'm not sure we should care about it.

Do you mean that "'-c color.ui=always' from the command line is passed down to the invocations of 'git' the 'add' command makes, and would break output from 'diff-index' that 'add -i' wants to parse"?

With the breakage that motivated "downgrade only for on-disk" change in mind, I do think that is the right behaviour. Those third-party scripts we broke knew how '-c color.ui=always' works and depended on it, and I consider that the command line configuration getting passed around as an integral part of 'how it works'. "Fixing" it will break them again.

Let's take it as a signal that tells us that the script writers know what they are doing and leave it as a longish rope they can play with.