Re: On interpret-trailers standalone tool
On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:41 PM, Junio C Hamano gits...@pobox.com wrote: Christian Couder chrisc...@tuxfamily.org writes: Yeah, except that we could add for example a '-o' option that would take a directory as argument and that would mean that the command should operate on all the files in this directory. It would be like the -o option of the format-patch command. For output for which users do not know offhand what files are to be produced, giving a single directory with -o makes tons of sense, but for input, naming each individual file (and with help with shell globs *) is a lot more natural UNIX tool way, I would think. Yeah, but the git interpret-trailers command is a special, because, if it takes files as arguments, then it is logical that its output would be also files and not stdout. (See also at the end of this message.) Take everything from this directory cannot be substitute for that, even though the reverse (i.e. by naming the input files with dir/*) is true. It is not a viable replacement. First, if you think that the command might often be used along with format-patch, ... I am not singling out format-patch output. Any text file/stream that has the commit log message may benefit from the trailers filter, and format-patch output is merely one very obvious example. As to the detection of the end of commit log message, the current EOF is where the log message ends (but we would remote trailing blank line) can easily be updated to EOF or the first three-dash line. Ok, I think that it's an interesting feature anyway, so I can add it now instead of later. Third, if trailers arguments are passed to the command using an option like -z token=value or -z token:value, it would be nice to the user for consistency if the same option could be used when passing the same arguments to git commit and perhaps other commands like git rebase, git cherry-pick and so on. This means that we now have to choose carefully the name of this option. Perhaps we can just give it a long name now like --trailer and care later about a short name,... Absolutely. That is a very sensible way to go. Ok, I will use --trailer then. As I said in my previous message, this unfortunately means that the command will not be very user friendly until we integrate it with other commands like git commit and find a short option name that hopefully work for all the commands. Fourth, some users might want the command to be passed some files as input, but they might not want the command to modify these input files. They might prefer the command to write its ouput into another set of output files. Maybe a syntax like cat or sed is not very well suited for this kind of use, while having a -o option for the output directory and a -i option for the input directory (if different from the output dir) would be nicer. Sure. I would expect we would require something like Perl's '-i' (in-place rewrite) option for this sequence to really work: git format-patch -o there -5 git that-command --options -i there/* and without, I would expect the output to come to its standard output. If the input comes from stdin, then I agree that the command should be a filter, so its output should be on stdout. But if the input comes from files given as arguments, then I would say that the command should behave as an editor and by default it should edit its input file inplace. Its input and output files should be different only if it is given one or more special option, Otherwise the example you gave: $ git format-patch -5 --cover-letter -o +my-series/ my-topic $ git interpret-trailers some args ./+my-series/0*.patch would result in having on stdout all the patches edited by git interpret-trailers. How would people could then easily send these edited patches? Thanks, Christian. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe git in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: On interpret-trailers standalone tool
Junio C Hamano gits...@pobox.com writes: ... I am looking at this more from the angle of obtaining a useful building block, while you seem to be thinking of this as a specialized tool for a narrow set of specifkc tasks. By the way, I am speaking with a bitter experience of designing the original format-patch command line parameters, thinking that This is a specialized tool to let me send what Linus hasn't picked up yet, so the command should take where Linus is and where I am. Not using the A..B syntax turned out to be a poor choice but that realization came long after the ship sailed---back then, A..B syntax was relatively new and it was unclear that it would become the universal syntax we use throughout the system to denote a range of commits in the DAG. The design mistake for starting at a specialized tool for a narrow set of specific tasks took considerable effort to retrofit the general syntax while not breaking the traditional usage. I am being cautious here because I do not see us making the same mistake. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe git in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: On interpret-trailers standalone tool
Junio C Hamano gits...@pobox.com writes: ... I am being cautious here because I do not see us making the same mistake. s/do not/ want to/ Sorry for the noise. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe git in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: On interpret-trailers standalone tool
Christian Couder chrisc...@tuxfamily.org writes: However, I am wondering if the current everything on the command line is instruction to the command is too limiting to allow the use of the tool both as a filter and as a tool that can work on one or more files named on the command line. If we start from there, the only way to later add these arguments are names of the files to be operated on is to add --file file1 --file file2... options, which feels quite backwards as a UNIX tool. Yeah, except that we could add for example a '-o' option that would take a directory as argument and that would mean that the command should operate on all the files in this directory. It would be like the -o option of the format-patch command. For output for which users do not know offhand what files are to be produced, giving a single directory with -o makes tons of sense, but for input, naming each individual file (and with help with shell globs *) is a lot more natural UNIX tool way, I would think. Take everything from this directory cannot be substitute for that, even though the reverse (i.e. by naming the input files with dir/*) is true. It is not a viable replacement. First, if you think that the command might often be used along with format-patch, ... I am not singling out format-patch output. Any text file/stream that has the commit log message may benefit from the trailers filter, and format-patch output is merely one very obvious example. As to the detection of the end of commit log message, the current EOF is where the log message ends (but we would remote trailing blank line) can easily be updated to EOF or the first three-dash line. Third, if trailers arguments are passed to the command using an option like -z token=value or -z token:value, it would be nice to the user for consistency if the same option could be used when passing the same arguments to git commit and perhaps other commands like git rebase, git cherry-pick and so on. This means that we now have to choose carefully the name of this option. Perhaps we can just give it a long name now like --trailer and care later about a short name,... Absolutely. That is a very sensible way to go. Fourth, some users might want the command to be passed some files as input, but they might not want the command to modify these input files. They might prefer the command to write its ouput into another set of output files. Maybe a syntax like cat or sed is not very well suited for this kind of use, while having a -o option for the output directory and a -i option for the input directory (if different from the output dir) would be nicer. Sure. I would expect we would require something like Perl's '-i' (in-place rewrite) option for this sequence to really work: git format-patch -o there -5 git that-command --options -i there/* and without, I would expect the output to come to its standard output. Thanks. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe git in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Re: On interpret-trailers standalone tool
From: Junio C Hamano gits...@pobox.com So far I've mostly been ignoring how the command line would look like, I don't really feel this way ;-) because the intermediate goal to my mind was to have it as a hook that are added by people better versed with Git than an average end-user, and if the command line interface had to change then they are capable of updating it, so it is more acceptable than the usual end-user tools to break compatibility between an early prototype and later versions, and because the final goal would be to libify the internal logic and integrate it into places we would invoke hooks, making the standalone command irrelevant. However, I started to care ;-) For example, wouldn't it be nice if you can do $ git format-patch -5 --cover-letter -o +my-series/ my-topic $ git interpret-trailers some args ./+my-series/0*.patch to fix-up the trailers portion of the proposed log message in the formatted patches? There may be other possible uses that having a standalone tool would be helpful, even after we removed the need for such a tool from commit, rebase, etc. by integrating the internal logic to the implementation of these commands. However, I am wondering if the current everything on the command line is instruction to the command is too limiting to allow the use of the tool both as a filter and as a tool that can work on one or more files named on the command line. If we start from there, the only way to later add these arguments are names of the files to be operated on is to add --file file1 --file file2... options, which feels quite backwards as a UNIX tool. Yeah, except that we could add for example a '-o' option that would take a directory as argument and that would mean that the command should operate on all the files in this directory. It would be like the -o option of the format-patch command. It would be easier to explain and understand if the command line option set is modeled after things like cat or sed, where non-option arguments are filenames, instructions are given in the form of --option arg (e.g. -e 's/foo/bar/' given to sed), and having no non-option arguments on the command line signals that the tool is working as a filter. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. I am not against making yet another number of changes to git interpret-trailers to make something like the above possible. But I think there are a few things that should be discussed first. First, if you think that the command might often be used along with format-patch, then it might be interesting for the user to have the command behave like format-patch instead of like cat or sed. This means that we could add the -o option I suggest above. And we don't need to do it now. We could add this option later instead of having to make the command work on many files now. Second, if the command should accept a patch as input instead of just a commit message, or both, this means that the command should have a way to tell if it is passed a patch, and then locate the commit message part in the patch. This means yet other changes to the command. Maybe these changes could be made later, in another series, or when the need arises to use it on full patches. Third, if trailers arguments are passed to the command using an option like -z token=value or -z token:value, it would be nice to the user for consistency if the same option could be used when passing the same arguments to git commit and perhaps other commands like git rebase, git cherry-pick and so on. This means that we now have to choose carefully the name of this option. Perhaps we can just give it a long name now like --trailer and care later about a short name, but I think it would not be very nice to the user to only have a long name for this option as it will very often be used. Fourth, some users might want the command to be passed some files as input, but they might not want the command to modify these input files. They might prefer the command to write its ouput into another set of output files. Maybe a syntax like cat or sed is not very well suited for this kind of use, while having a -o option for the output directory and a -i option for the input directory (if different from the output dir) would be nicer. Thanks, Christian. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe git in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
