From: Emily Shaffer <nasamuffin@google.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] usage: clarify --recurse-submodules as a boolean
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2023 17:07:43 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZDCwT3mhaGHyydng@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqcz4fi7bd.fsf@gitster.g>
On Fri, Apr 07, 2023 at 04:47:02PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
> Emily Shaffer <nasamuffin@google.com> writes:
>
> > `git switch` `git checkout`, `git reset`, and `git read-tree` allow a user to choose to
> > recurse into submodules. All three of these commands' short usage seems
> > to indicate that `--recurse-submodules` should take an argument. In
> > practice, ...
>
> Did you add 'git switch' at the last minute in so much of a hurry
> that you forgot to put a comma after it, or rewrap the paragraph?
> ;-)
It was 'git checkout', if you must know ;) and in such a hurry that I
also neglected to s/three/four/g. Will fix it with the reroll.
>
> I do agree with you that "git checkout -h" and "git reset -h" that
> list
>
> --recurse-submodules[=<checkout>]
> --recurse-submodules[=<reset>]
>
> are being unnecessarily confusing by not saying anything about what
> these placeholders are to be filled with.
>
> This however is a breaking change. Even though there is no hint
> that <checkout> and <reset> placeholders above take either Boolean
> true or false in the documentation, they may have picked up a habit
> to use the undocumented form from some random website.
Ah, yeah, I see what you mean, from my locally-built version:
g checkout --recurse-submodules=false master
error: option `recurse-submodules' takes no value
> I am not
> sure it is safe to change the behaviour right under them, like this
> patch does, and I wonder if we should do this in two steps, with its
> first step doing:
>
> * "--[no-]recurse-submodules" from the command line gets no
> warning, as that is the way we recommend users to use the
> feature.
>
> * "--recurse-submodules=$true" and "--recurse-submodules=$false"
> (for various ways to spell true and false) get warning that tells
> the users that versions of Git in a year or more in the future
> will stop supporting the Boolean argument form of the option and
> instructs them to use "--[no-]recurse-submodules" instead.
>
> We may have to also mention in the documentation that historically
> the code accepted a Boolean value as an optional argument for the
> option by mistake, but we are deprecating that form.
>
> And after the second step, the code will end up looking like what
> this patch shows.
I'd be happy to do so with a reroll, probably on Monday. It's true that
while these are user-facing commands which we don't guarantee backwards
compatibility for, there's not a reason to subject users to that kind of
pain unnecessarily.
Thanks for the quick response.
- Emily
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-04-08 0:07 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-04-07 22:18 [PATCH] usage: clarify --recurse-submodules as a boolean Emily Shaffer
2023-04-07 23:47 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-04-08 0:03 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-04-08 0:22 ` Emily Shaffer
2023-04-08 0:59 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-04-10 16:41 ` Emily Shaffer
2023-04-08 0:07 ` Emily Shaffer [this message]
2023-04-10 23:07 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-04-10 22:52 ` [PATCH v2] " Emily Shaffer
2023-04-10 23:10 ` Junio C Hamano
2023-05-05 17:30 ` Junio C Hamano
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