Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] cat-file: add mailmap support

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2022 01:36:40 +0200

On Thu, Jun 30 2022, Siddharth Asthana wrote:

> git cat-file is not a plumbing command anymore, especially as it gained
> more and more high level features like its `--batch-command` mode. So
> tools do use it to get commit and tag contents that are then displayed
> to users. This content which has author, committer or tagger
> information, could benefit from passing through the mailmap mechanism,
> before being sent or displayed.
>
> This patch adds --[no-]use-mailmap command line option to the git
> cat-file command. It also adds --[no-]mailmap option as an alias to
> --[no-]use-mailmap.

I think I know the answer, but I think it would be helpful to discuss
the underlying motivations too. I.e. an obvious alternative is "why not
just get this information out of git show/log then?".

The "I think I know the answer" being that I suspect this is to cater to
gitaly having persistent "cat-file" processes around, whereas for "git
log" it would entail spinning up a new process per-request.

But maybe I'm missing something :)

So not as a blocker for this change, which I think can be made small
enough to be justified in cat-file, but just for context: If "git log"
had a similar --batch mode, would there be a need for this change, or is
this just adding a common case to "cat-file" to "tide us over" (as it
were) while that sort of thing doesn't exist yet (and maybe never will
:()?