git@vger.kernel.org mailing list mirror (one of many)
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: Rasmus Villemoes <rv@rasmusvillemoes.dk>, git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] help: allow redirecting to help for aliased command
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 11:12:51 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180926181251.GB63889@syl> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqzhw4mgq3.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 08:16:36AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Rasmus Villemoes <rv@rasmusvillemoes.dk> writes:
>
> > I often use 'git <cmd> --help' as a quick way to get the documentation
> > for a command. However, I've also trained my muscle memory to use my
> > aliases (cp=cherry-pick, co=checkout etc.), which means that I often end
> > up doing
> >
> >   git cp --help
> >
> > to which git correctly informs me that cp is an alias for
> > cherry-pick. However, I already knew that, and what I really wanted was
> > the man page for the cherry-pick command.
> >
> > This introduces a help.followAlias config option that transparently
> > redirects to (the first word of) the alias text (provided of course it
> > is not a shell command), similar to the option for autocorrect of
> > misspelled commands.
>
> While I do agree with you that it would sometimes be very handy if
> "git cp --help" behaved identically to "git cherry-pick --help" just
> like "git cp -h" behaves identically to "git cherry-pick -h" when
> you have "[alias] cp = cherry-pick", I do not think help.followAlias
> configuration is a good idea.  I may know, perhaps because I use it
> all the time, by heart that "cp" is aliased to "cherry-pick" and
> want "git cp --help" to directly give me the manpage, but I may not
> remember if "co" was commit or checkout and want to be concisely
> told that it is aliased to checkout without seeing the full manpage.
> Which means you'd want some way to command line override anyway, and
> having to say "git -c help.followAlias=false cp --help" is not a
> great solution.

I think I responded partially to this hunk in another thread, but I
think I can add some additional information here where it is more
relevant.

One approach to take when digesting this is that 'git co --help' shows
you the manual page for 'git-checkout(1)' (or whatever you have it
aliased to), so that answers the question for the caller who has a
terminal open.

In the case where you are scripting (and want to know what 'git co'
means for programmatic usage), I think that there are two options. One,
which you note above, is the 'git -c help.followAlias=false ...'
approach, which I don't think is so bad for callers, given the tradeoff.

Another way to go is 'git config alias.co', which should provide the
same answer. I think that either would be fine.

Perhaps we could assume that 'help.followAlias' is false when it is
unset, _and_ isatty(2) says that we aren't a TTY. Otherwise, since I
feel that this is a good feature that should be the new default, we can
assume it's set to true.

Thanks,
Taylor

  reply	other threads:[~2018-09-26 18:13 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2018-09-26 10:26 [PATCH] help: allow redirecting to help for aliased command Rasmus Villemoes
2018-09-26 14:37 ` Taylor Blau
2018-09-26 15:19   ` Duy Nguyen
2018-09-28  7:44     ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-09-26 15:30   ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 18:09     ` Taylor Blau
2018-09-26 18:20       ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 15:16 ` Duy Nguyen
2018-09-26 15:16 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-26 18:12   ` Taylor Blau [this message]
2018-09-28  7:53     ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-09-26 18:49   ` Jeff King
2018-09-26 19:31     ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-28  8:18     ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-09-29  8:21       ` Jeff King
2018-09-29 17:39         ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-30  4:27           ` Jeff King
2018-09-30  5:27             ` Junio C Hamano
2018-09-30  5:53               ` Jeff King
2018-09-28  7:40   ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-09-28 17:00     ` Junio C Hamano
2018-10-01 11:21 ` [PATCH v2 1/3] help: redirect to aliased commands for "git cmd --help" Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-01 11:21   ` [PATCH v2 2/3] git.c: handle_alias: prepend alias info when first argument is -h Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03  2:16     ` Jeff King
2018-10-01 11:21   ` [PATCH v2 3/3] git-help.txt: document "git help cmd" vs "git cmd --help" for aliases Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03  2:18     ` Jeff King
2018-10-03  6:25       ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03  2:13   ` [PATCH v2 1/3] help: redirect to aliased commands for "git cmd --help" Jeff King
2018-10-03  6:24     ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03  7:06       ` Jeff King
2018-10-03 11:42   ` [PATCH v3 0/3] alias help tweaks Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03 11:42     ` [PATCH v3 1/3] help: redirect to aliased commands for "git cmd --help" Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-05  8:19       ` Junio C Hamano
2018-10-05 10:22         ` Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-05 16:47           ` Junio C Hamano
2018-10-03 11:42     ` [PATCH v3 2/3] git.c: handle_alias: prepend alias info when first argument is -h Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-03 11:42     ` [PATCH v3 3/3] git-help.txt: document "git help cmd" vs "git cmd --help" for aliases Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-04  0:10     ` [PATCH v3 0/3] alias help tweaks Jeff King
2018-10-09 11:59     ` [PATCH v4 " Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-09 11:59       ` [PATCH v4 1/3] help: redirect to aliased commands for "git cmd --help" Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-09 11:59       ` [PATCH v4 2/3] git.c: handle_alias: prepend alias info when first argument is -h Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-09 11:59       ` [PATCH v4 3/3] git-help.txt: document "git help cmd" vs "git cmd --help" for aliases Rasmus Villemoes
2018-10-12  3:17       ` [PATCH v4 0/3] alias help tweaks Junio C Hamano

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20180926181251.GB63889@syl \
    --to=me@ttaylorr.com \
    --cc=git@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=gitster@pobox.com \
    --cc=rv@rasmusvillemoes.dk \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://80x24.org/mirrors/git.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).