Re: [PATCH] alias: detect loops in mixed execution mode

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Cc: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, "Tim Schumacher" <timschumi@gmx.de>,
	"Duy Nguyen" <pclouds@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] alias: detect loops in mixed execution mode
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:23:01 +0900	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <xmqq5zxuzsei.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20181020185852.GA6234@sigill.intra.peff.net> (Jeff King's message of "Sat, 20 Oct 2018 14:58:53 -0400")

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> I agree it's probably quite rare, if it exists at all. But I also wonder
> how important looping alias protection is. It's also rare, and the
> outcome is usually "gee, I wonder why this is taking so long? ^C".
>
> At least that's my instinct. I don't remember having run into this at
> all myself (though certainly I have written my fair share of infinite
> loops in other systems, like bash aliases, and that is what happened).

Yup, that instict is shared with me, and I tend to prefer something
based on a simple counter for that reason.

> Would we print a long error message? I'd assume that we'd just recurse
> for longer and print one error message that says:
>
>   fatal: woah, you're 1000-levels deep in Git commands!
>
> That doesn't help the user find the recursion, but re-running with
> GIT_TRACE=1 would make it pretty clear, I'd think.

Thanks.