From: Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2025 18:38:28 GMT
Subject: Re: [GSoC RFC PATCH v4 1/4] repo: declare the repo command
Message-ID: <y3t46fgy6vun6qlxb2fq7n3tcq6zkhfxeoluratzw7jj73ksyn@ggyxtxbgdknu>
In-Reply-To: <aHZChXPTbk_X6xDK@pks.im>

On 25/07/15 01:59PM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 08:52:28PM -0300, Lucas Seiki Oshiro wrote:
> > +This command returns the retrieved data following a null-terminated format with
> > +this syntax:
> > ++
> > +----------------
> > +key1<LF>value1<NUL>
> > +key2<LF>value2<NUL>
> > +...
> > +----------------
> > ++
> 
> One of the things I wonder is whether we should by default adapt those
> tools to have human-readable format, e.g. in a way that it can be easily
> added to git-bugreport(1). This would teach script authors that want to
> use the command to use `git repo info --format=porcelain` right from the
> start to have a machine-parseable output, and it would allow us to
> iterate on the exact output format.

For this subcommand (and the future "stats" one), I think the ouput
should default to a simple <key=value> form for each line and use a `-z`
flag to add support for a nul-delimited mode. This way we still have a
default view that a human can feasible consume while also supporting a
more machine friendly format in a manner consistent with other commands.

For a more decorated view of the data, something akin to git-sizer(1),
maybe we could introduce a separate subcommand in the future like `git
repo summary`. This could allow us to implement other information such
as "level of concern" separately and also group the data in a way that
is easier to digest.

-Justin