RE: Renaming "non-contrib" things out of contrib/* (was "Re: [Bug] git-credential-netrc.perl[...]")

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> 
> On Sun, May 23 2021, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> 
> > Jeff King wrote:
> >
> >> I suspect that just opening a bug report against distro packages might
> >> get some traction (especially if it comes with a patch to create the
> >> extra package).
> >
> > I have tried that; do doesn't work. If git developers have $x in
> > "contrib" it's for a reason.
> >
> >> I do wonder if packagers are hesitant to reach into
> >> contrib/,
> >
> > Of course they are! The word "contrib" has an obvious meaning.
> 
> [Minor edit to the quoted text to inline the link]:
> 
> > This is precisely the reason why I tried to graduate
> > "contrib/completion" out of "contrib" to no avail:
> > https://lore.kernel.org/git/1399607587-14127-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/
> 
> Seems like that patch just got no replies at the time. FWIW I'd very
> much be for it and would encourage you to re-submit it.
> 
> I'm not sure s/shared/contrib/g is the best naming though, but maybe I'm
> contributing to needless bikeshedding by mentioning that.

It is the best location because that's where completions go.

You can check the location bash-completion suggests to install
completions to:

  % pkg-config --variable=completionsdir bash-completion
  /usr/share/bash-completion/completions

In the case of zsh it's /usr/share/zsh/site-functions.

Additionally, if you install them in your home directory, it should be
$XDG_DATA_HOME/bash-completion/completions.

$XDG_DATA_HOME is $HOME/.local/share (analogous to /usr/share).

> You apparently named it like that to match where distros usually install
> it (/usr/share), but we also have docs there, locale, and the perl/
> directory usually (well, at least on my distro) ends up there.

Distributions install them there, because that's where they are expected
(by bash-completion and zsh).

> I wonder if just a top-level completion/* wouldn't be best, or if we
> want to group them all together something like
> optional/{completion,credential}/ or other name suggesting that these
> are meant to interact with not-always-present 3rd party software. Maybe
> integrations/* ?

extra/ is a better name.

However, there's already many things that are optional, like gitk and
git-gui, do they belong there too? For that matter locales are optional
too.

I think if such a decison to have an extra/ directory is made, it should
be orthogonal to the completion graduation.

> For some of these names a general re-arrangement of contrib/* would be a
> logical thing to follow, e.g. I think it would make sense to carve out
> various ci/, contrib/coccinelle, Documentation/doc-diff,
> check-builtins.sh etc. and other "only for supporting git.git
> development" or "only called by our own Makefile(s)" into some
> consistently named pattern.

Me too.

> I'm also very much in favor of building and testing all of this software
> by default, to the best of our ability. We've had some avoidable bitrot
> e.g. in subtree and mw-to-git in the past, some of that is a pain to
> test (e.g. requiring an installed MediaWiki), but we can usually
> build/test some part of it (e.g. in that case, does it even compile as
> Perl code?). In other cases we could compile/test things by default on
> certain platforms if they're platform-specific.

Yeah, some spring cleaning would be good.

I'll put sending the patch in my unending to-do list.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras