On Sun, Nov 05, 2017 at 12:58:18PM +0100, Martin Ågren wrote: > On 4 November 2017 at 10:28, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > - the pager.<cmd> config is mis-designed, because our config keys > > cannot represent all possible command names (e.g., case folding and > > illegal characters). This should be pager.<cmd>.enable or similar. > > Some discussion in (this message and the surrounding thread): > > > > https://public-inbox.org/git/20170711101942.h2uwxtgzvgguzivu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > > > But I think you could find more by searching the archive. > > I'm posting four patches I have on this to save others from redoing my > work and findings. These patches feel a bit incomplete, which is why I > put them to the side some time ago (and eventually forgot about them). Thanks for sharing these; it's nice if we can avoid duplicating work. We'll see if somebody at the event wants to pick up this topic. > In particular, they do not teach `--paginate` to use the pager > configured by `pager.foo.command`. It is already now possible to use > `pager.foo` to say "I don't want you to page, but if I later give you > `pager.foo=true`, this is the pager I want you to use". That does not > work with `--paginate`, but this can all be explained -- indeed, we > document that `--paginate` overrules `pager.foo`. Hmm. I think the current behavior is actually buggy. I assume the documentation you mean is from git.txt: --paginate:: Pipe all output into 'less' (or if set, $PAGER) if standard output is a terminal. This overrides the `pager.<cmd>` configuration options (see the "Configuration Mechanism" section below). That comes from 06300d9753 (git.1: Clarify the behavior of the --paginate option, 2010-02-14). But I think that commit was just trying to clarify that "--paginate" overrides the defaults and config, but not does say "always paginate". I suspect nobody really noticed it in practice because once you've configured "pager.foo", there's basically no need to ever use "--paginate". > If we teach `--paginate` to respect `pager.foo.command`, it seems that > we would either 1) introduce a small (and possibly hard to understand > and explain) difference between the old-style and the new-style > pager-configuration or 2) knowingly change the behavior of `--paginate` > with `pager.foo` or 3) knowingly change the behavior of > `pager.foo=false` as documented in the first patch. I think I'm suggesting (2), then. -Peff
