Subject: Re: [PATCH] Documentation: replace 'vi' for 'editor' to reflect build-time option

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:46:50 -0700

Rodrigo Silva <[email-masked]> writes:

> At 23:16 29/3/2012, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>>I've already rejected this patch once, but that was primarily because the
>>patch was not justified with the above "I read everybody else's git uses
>>'vi' on the Interweb, and even though my distro's manual page says it uses
>>'nano', I didn't bother to read it." scenario.
>
> @Jonathan: I'm really sorry for this confusion...
> ... Junio suggested me to send this patch to
> Debian, that's why I filled the bug in Debian BTS. It was meant to be a
> Debian-only patch.

It is a Debian package bug that the git_*.diff patch they use to customize
the upstream source ends up making a resulting binary to use different
editor and pager but does so without editing Documentation/ files to match
the description to what their executable does.  The resulting package is
not self consistent.

But we aren't making it particularly easy for Debian to do so.

The debian/rules (the Makefile that invokes our Makefile) file in the
git_*.diff patch merely overrides DEFAULT_EDITOR and DEFAULT_PAGER,
instead of patching editor.c and pager.c to replace the fallback hardcoded
defaults "vi" and "less".  But these Makefile variables only affect that
goes in the executable, and they do not affect the documentation.

So in the shorter term, I think Jonathan's patch would be OK for me to
carry in my tree, but even in that case I think Debian still needs to
replace the "vi/less" in the documentation to tell what they chosen for
their users.

In the longer term, it may make more sense to let these Makefile variables
replace "vi" and "less" with whatever values set to them, while keeping
the "default chosen at the build time, usually" wording.

In any case, I'd appreciate it if either of you can turn Jonathan's "How
about something like this?" into the final version to be fed to "git am".

Thanks.