Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/5] stop installing old libexec aliases like "git-init"

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
Cc: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	mhagger@alum.mit.edu, "Git Mailing List" <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
	dnj@google.com, prohaska@zib.de, john@keeping.me.uk,
	stanhu@gmail.com, richardc@unixbeard.net,
	"Joey Hess" <id@joeyh.name>
Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/5] stop installing old libexec aliases like "git-init"
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2018 11:06:56 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20181122160656.GB28192@sigill.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1811221344360.41@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>

On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 01:48:53PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> > So it's maybe do-able, but not quite as trivial as one might hope.
> 
> A trivial alternative would be to recommend adding a man page for
> 3rd-party git-<tool>s.
> 
> In other words, as soon as `git-sizer` is accompanied by `git-sizer.1` in
> one of the appropriate locations, it is set.

Yes, it would be nice if everything did ship with a manpage.
Unfortunately that complicates installation, where the installation for
many such tools is "save this file to your $PATH".

Tools like git-sizer may be getting big and popular enough to merit the
extra infrastructure, but I think there are many smaller scripts which
don't.

> FWIW I do have a couple of scripts I use that I install into
> `$HOME/bin/git-<tool>`. Although, granted, I essentially switched to
> aliases for most of them, where the aliases still call a script that is
> checked out in some folder in my home directory. The reason: this works in
> more circumstances, as I do not have to add `$HOME/bin` to the `PATH`,
> say, in PowerShell.
> 
> So YMMV with git-<tool>s. My rule of thumb is: if I want to use this
> myself only, I'll make it an alias. If I want to ship it (e.g. with Git
> for Windows), I'll make it a git-<tool>.

I have a handful of personal git-* scripts: mostly ones that are big
enough to be unwieldy as an alias. But then, $PATH management is pretty
straightforward on my platforms, so it's easier to drop a script there
than to point an alias to a non-git-* script.

-Peff