Re: [PATCH 1/1 v2] pager: move pager-specific setup into the build

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2016 at 04:03:40PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> writes:
> 
> > From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
> >
> > Allowing PAGER_ENV to be set at build-time allows us to move
> > pager-specific knowledge out of our build.  Currently, this
> > allows us to set a better default for FreeBSD where more(1)
> > is the same binary as less(1).
> 
> Thanks for resurrecting, but I am not sure what "a better default"
> is from the above description and with the patch.  Even though a
> naive reading of the above (i.e. "less" and "more" are the same)
> makes me expect that the patch will give the same set of default
> environment settings to those on FreeBSD, you give LESS=FRX and
> MORE=-R, i.e. they are configured differently.

I wondered about this, too. They are the same binary, but calling less
as "more" (or setting LESS_IS_MORE) causes less to behave "like more".
Looking at the manpage, none the usual FRX options is affected. So in
theory we could just set MORE=FRX on FreeBSD.

That would be bad a idea in general, as other non-less implementations
of more might get confused.  "more" is in POSIX, and so is $MORE (and it
does not understand any of our options).

You could also make the knob "MORE_IS_LESS" or something, and just
blindly copy $LESS to $MORE. That's a bad idea, though, if somebody does
stick one of the incompatible flags in the build options.

-Peff