(minor concern) git using the pager should not be a default

Hello,

I'm risking myself on this mailing list after looking for some advise on IRC. Basically I know about this previous attempt http://marc.info/?l=git&m=122955045415845&w=2 but my request has little to do with emacs.

I believe UNIX recommends some rules in the «less is more» spirit when designing command line applications [basically listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy].

As far as I understand those, stdin/out/err would be better left with minimum processing. Silent execution with $? = 0 is the best thing that can happen.

Per those rules, which I think apply to Linux apps, it would be preferrable if the *default* setup of git didn't fork a pager, didn't use colors, didn't behave differently whether piped or not.

Of course I would be the first to always call the tool with git diff |less excepted when I do git diff |diffstat or enjoy such options as command line or environment switches to git. when I want.

So the point is more about the appropriateness of pushing that special ergonomy to all users, knowing it makes most users happy.

Isn't the design principle superior to the wishes of the masses?

Thanks for reading, Don't laugh, Keep on the good work.

Sincerely yours,

e.m.

Emmanuel Michon <emmanuel_michon@sigmadesigns.com> writes:

Only when you are living an ideal fantasy land.

Emmanuel Michon <emmanuel_michon@sigmadesigns.com> writes:

That is exactly why our plumbing layer of commands (e.g. "git diff-tree", "git rev-list") do not page by default for people who want to go bare-metal Unix philosophy.

In other words, Porcelain (roughly speaking, those that page by default when their standard output is terminal), are not "command line applications"; they have a layer on top with a built-in UI.

If you follow Unix philosophy and want to combine tools each of which is designed to do one thing and one thing well, you would be using the commands from the plumbing layer to write your scripts, and wouldn't have to raise that "minor concern" in the first place, as they do not page by default ;-).

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

Is "status" considered a plumbing layer command? Because I have often wondered why it does not use the pager by default. I pipe it through less all the time and it's kind of annoying that it works differently than everything else.

                                -Dave

<dag@cray.com> writes:

I would be pretty annoyed if git status would page by default.

Andreas.

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 08:09:34PM +0200, Andreas Schwab wrote:

This one has been debated for a while. People used to complain that it did not page, and then we turned on the pager, and then people complained that it did page. I wrote 4e10738 (Allow per-command pager config, 2008-07-03) to help settle it, and now you can do:

  git config pager.status true

if you really want it. As of 9bad723 (allow command-specific pagers in pager.<cmd>, 2010-11-17), you can even set it to an arbitrary pager for each git command.

With all those options, it's amazing that we can still have threads about what should page. :)

-Peff

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Cool!

Well to be fair, it's hard to know when to read the documentation again. :)

                               -Dave

<dag@cray.com> writes:

Have you asked "git help git" lately?