Re: bug: git name-rev --stdin --no-undefined on detached head

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 25, 2021, 00:35 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqsfuh1pxz.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqk0ft3i3g.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Two possible things we can do to improve are
>
>  * Fix the documentation; it is not for scripters but for annotating
>    text with object names.
>
>  * Possibly add --names-from-standard-input option that would behave
>    more like "we cannot afford to stuff all object names on the
>    command line, so we feed them one by one from the standard input"
>    mode the "--stdin" option of other subcommands use.
>
> I do not think the latter is so important, as it is perfectly OK to
> use xargs to split the large input into multiple invocations of
> name-rev.  This is unlike "pack-objects --stdin" where the command
> needs to see _all_ input in a single invocation.

This is primarily to teach newer developers how incompatible changes are done in this project. I am not suggesting that introducing such an incompatible change and following through these steps to the end is a good idea in this case.

Hypothetically, if name-rev were so important a command that the xargs based workaround were unacceptable, what we would probably do is to make the following changes over time.

 1. Introduce a new `--annotate-text` option, which is a synonym to
    the current `--stdin` option.  `--stdin` will work the same way
    as today, but using it will issue a warning() to the standard
    error to tell people to use the `--annotate-text` option
    instead.

 2. After a while, change `--stdin` to die() with a suggestion that
    people should instead pipe into xargs to invoke name-rev
    instead.

 3. After the above two steps, users and scripts of `--stdin` will
    go extinct.  Reintroduce `--stdin` but with a behaviour more in
    line with the `--stdin` option of other subcommands, i.e. take
    one arg per line from the standard input, and behave as if they
    came in the argv[] array.

The idea is to give users an early warning that is annoying enough to encourage migration, ample time to adjust to the new world order, and to ensure that there are no stragglers that gets hurt when the name gets reused for an option with totally different behaviour.

It may not be a bad idea to do steps #1 and #2, though. I do not think xargs name-rev is bad enough to require going to the step #3, but `--stdin` that exists and does a wrong thing is much worse than `--stdin` that does not exist, and finishing upto step #2 is enough to rectify that.