Re: [PATCH v2] rebase -i: add config to abbreviate command-names

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Hi Junio,
>
> On Tue, 25 Apr 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Running
>> 
>> $ git grep -i -e 'instruction [ls]' -e 'todo l'
>> 
>> lets us count how we call them, and we can see there is only one
>> instance of 'instruction list'.
>> 
>> Running the above in v1.7.3 tree shows that it was originally called
>> 'todo list', and we can see that an enhancement of cherry-pick in
>> cd4093b6 ("Merge branch 'rr/revert-cherry-pick-continue'",
>> 2011-10-05)) started calling this instruction sheet around v1.7.8.
>> 
>> A follow-on patch to unify all three would be nice, indeed.
>
> But we cannot unify them, as the config option's name uses "instruction"
> and to keep backwards-compatibility, we are simply unable to resolve the
> confusion.

We can correct historical mistakes by introducing preferred synonym
to misnamed configuration variables, clearly document why we prefer
it over the misnamed one that is now deprecated, and then eventually
dropping it at a major version boundary.