Subject: Re: [PATCH 15/15] scalar: accept -C and -c options before the subcommand

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2021 10:32:48 +0200

On Mon, Aug 30 2021, Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget wrote:

> The `git` executable has these two very useful options:
>
> -C <directory>:
> 	switch to the specified directory before performing any actions
>
> -c <key>=<value>:
> 	temporarily configure this setting for the duration of the
> 	specified scalar subcommand
>
> With this commit, we teach the `scalar` executable the same trick.
> [...]
> +	while (argc > 1 && *argv[1] == '-') {
> +		if (!strcmp(argv[1], "-C")) {
> +			if (argc < 3)
> +				die(_("-C requires a <directory>"));
> +			if (chdir(argv[2]) < 0)
> +				die_errno(_("could not change to '%s'"),
> +					  argv[2]);
> +			argc -= 2;
> +			argv += 2;
> +		} else if (!strcmp(argv[1], "-c")) {
> +			if (argc < 3)
> +				die(_("-c requires a <key>=<value> argument"));
> +			git_config_push_parameter(argv[2]);
> +			argc -= 2;
> +			argv += 2;
> +		} else
> +			break;
> +	}

This along with my earlier comment about the Makefile copy/pasting makes
me wonder if an easier way to integrate this wouldn't be to refactor
git.c a bit to have it understand either "git" or "scalar", then instead
of "ls-tree" etc. as "git" the subcommands would become "built-ins".

Which would give us both "[git|scalar] [-c ...] <cmd>" for free, and
elimante the need for the inevetable future divergence of wanting -p,
-P, --exec-path etc. in both.