From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: AS53758 23.128.96.0/24 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=3.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE, SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_PASS shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by dcvr.yhbt.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF6661F5AE for ; Wed, 21 Jul 2021 08:12:49 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S235465AbhGUH2T (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:28:19 -0400 Received: from cloud.peff.net ([104.130.231.41]:55848 "EHLO cloud.peff.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S235919AbhGUH2C (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:28:02 -0400 Received: (qmail 7195 invoked by uid 109); 21 Jul 2021 08:08:37 -0000 Received: from Unknown (HELO peff.net) (10.0.1.2) by cloud.peff.net (qpsmtpd/0.94) with ESMTP; Wed, 21 Jul 2021 08:08:37 +0000 Authentication-Results: cloud.peff.net; auth=none Received: (qmail 32193 invoked by uid 111); 21 Jul 2021 08:08:37 -0000 Received: from coredump.intra.peff.net (HELO sigill.intra.peff.net) (10.0.0.2) by peff.net (qpsmtpd/0.94) with (TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 encrypted) ESMTPS; Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:08:37 -0400 Authentication-Results: peff.net; auth=none Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:08:35 -0400 From: Jeff King To: =?utf-8?B?w4Z2YXIgQXJuZmrDtnLDsA==?= Bjarmason Cc: Taylor Blau , SZEDER =?utf-8?B?R8OhYm9y?= , git@vger.kernel.org, Junio C Hamano , Derrick Stolee , Andrei Rybak Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 6/6] commit-graph: show usage on "commit-graph [write|verify] garbage" Message-ID: References: <20210720174739.GA2025@szeder.dev> <20210720175530.GA23408@szeder.dev> <87lf60vfyn.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> <87im14unfd.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <87im14unfd.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 09:26:38AM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > > > I do think in general this recent proliferation of t/helper over new > plumbing built-ins has sent git a bit in the wrong direction. > > E.g. I think the likes of t/helper/test-pkt-line.c should really be a > plumbing tool, the same goes for many (but not all) the test tool, we > could just document them as being "unstable plumbing" or whatever. FWIW, I agree with you here. These kind of "inspection" tools are handy when you are debugging something. Building a copy of test-tool on a production system is only a mild inconvenience for me, but not being able to ask a user things like "what does git pack-bitmap --dump .git/objects/pack*.bitmap say" is occasionally quite annoying. The flip side is that we expect the overall quality of user-visible tools to be a bit higher, and we're generally on the hook to keep supporting them. Maybe that's solvable with documentation. I dunno. > But I think I've been losing that argument recently, e.g. after [1] > (which I argued we should put into git-ls-files) even things like git's > basic idea of the state of the index are exposed in some helpers, but > not corresponding plumbing. Yeah. I wish "ls-files --debug" showed more of the extension data, for example. > Anyway, even if we assume that's an argument that would carry the day in > general I'd find it hard to justify git-env--helper being a thing that > should be exposed to users or post-"make install", it's purely for the > use of our own test suite. Yeah, I'd agree with that. The most valuable helpers to me are the ones that help us understand what Git is seeing, or what's in a binary file format. Obscure-case "functional" helpers are less likely to be generally useful. -Peff