Re: [PATCH 13/14] completion: add default options

From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
To: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
	"Git Mailing List" <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	"SZEDER Gábor" <szeder.dev@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 13/14] completion: add default options
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2019 10:32:32 +0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CACsJy8CLSPdS56O=hJM2FkVa5Qk4V2V_f-dSPMaBYARJLN1oNQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s1hJZs3z=6aHJPzrbW05S=hmVE4RrcRBETzz7iCCqEPPg@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 8:38 AM Felipe Contreras
<felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 12:22 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > On Sat, Jun 22, 2019 at 5:31 AM Felipe Contreras
> > > <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Versions of Git older than v2.17 don't know about
> > >> --git-completion-helper, so provide some defaults for them.
> > > ...
> > >> +__gitcomp_builtin_add_default=" --dry-run --verbose --interactive --patch --edit --force --update --renormalize --intent-to-add --all --ignore-
> > > removal --refresh --ignore-errors --ignore-missing --chmod=
> > > --no-dry-run -- --no-verbose --no-interactive --no-patch --no-edit
> > > --no-force --no-update --no-renormalize --no-intent-to-add --no-all
> > > --no-ignore-removal --no-refresh --no-ignore-errors
> > > --no-ignore-missing --no-chmod"
> > >
> > > And who's going to keep these uptodate? If you do this, might as well
> > > delete --git-completion-helper
> > >
> > > A more acceptable option might be regenerate git-completion.bash and
> > > run --git-completion-helper to generate these, or make
> > > git-completion.bash source a generated file.
> >
> > Nicely analysed and summarized.  What kind of target audience are we
> > talking about?
>
> The people that install their completion independently of their
> distribution. A quick search in Stack Overflow shows hundreds of
> questions, many related to Homebrew and Cygwin.

Which could be answered with installing the right completion version.
I don't think we make any promise of supporting "old" versions anyway
even if used to work.

I could see we add support to source/preload some generated shell
script, so that it works without --git-completion-helper [1]. But
that's about it, the generated scripts that contain all these
__gitcomp_ variables can be packaged and maintained separately. Then
you could even have multiple completion packages for different git
versions if you want. But I'd rather we (git.git devs) do not maintain
these generated variables by ourselves.

[1] which may even gain interest from Windows crowd because there are
fewer processes to run.
-- 
Duy