The dashed form of the built-ins is so passé. Incidentally, this also handles the .pdb issue in MSVC's install Makefile target that Peff pointed out in the context of the "slimming down" patch series [https://lore.kernel.org/git/20200813145719.GA891370@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/] . This addresses https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/issues/406 Changes since v2: * Reworded and clarified the commit messages of the second and third patch. Changes since v1: * Fixed check-docs under SKIP_DASHED_BUILT_INS * Renamed ALL_PROGRAMS_AND_BUILT_INS to ALL_COMMANDS_TO_INSTALL to reflect its purpose better. * Revamped the commit message of patch 2/3 and 3/3. Johannes Schindelin (3): msvc: copy the correct `.pdb` files in the Makefile target `install` Optionally skip linking/copying the built-ins ci: stop linking built-ins to the dashed versions Makefile | 71 +++++++++++++++++++++------------------ ci/run-build-and-tests.sh | 2 +- 2 files changed, 40 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-) base-commit: 878e727637ec5815ccb3301eb994a54df95b21b8 Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-411%2Fdscho%2Foptionally-skip-dashed-built-ins-v3 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-411/dscho/optionally-skip-dashed-built-ins-v3 Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/411 Range-diff vs v2: 1: 1880a0e4bf = 1: 1880a0e4bf msvc: copy the correct `.pdb` files in the Makefile target `install` 2: 166bd0d8fb ! 2: 52deafded5 Optionally skip linking/copying the built-ins @@ Commit message executable to the dashed name in `libexec/git-core/`), in practice, it is probably almost irrelevant. - In fact, some platforms (such as Windows) only started gaining - meaningful Git support _after_ the dashed form was deprecated, and - therefore one would expect that all this hard-linking is unnecessary on - those platforms. + However, we *do* care about keeping people's scripts working (even if + they were written before the non-dashed form started to be recommended). + + Keeping this backwards-compatibility is not necessarily cheap, though: + even so much as amending the tip commit in a git.git checkout will + require re-linking all of those dashed commands. On this developer's + laptop, this makes a noticeable difference: + + $ touch version.c && time make + CC version.o + AR libgit.a + LINK git-bugreport.exe + [... 11 similar lines ...] + LN/CP git-remote-https.exe + LN/CP git-remote-ftp.exe + LN/CP git-remote-ftps.exe + LINK git.exe + BUILTIN git-add.exe + [... 123 similar lines ...] + BUILTIN all + SUBDIR git-gui + SUBDIR gitk-git + SUBDIR templates + LINK t/helper/test-fake-ssh.exe + LINK t/helper/test-line-buffer.exe + LINK t/helper/test-svn-fe.exe + LINK t/helper/test-tool.exe + + real 0m36.633s + user 0m3.794s + sys 0m14.141s + + $ touch version.c && time make SKIP_DASHED_BUILT_INS=1 + CC version.o + AR libgit.a + LINK git-bugreport.exe + [... 11 similar lines ...] + LN/CP git-remote-https.exe + LN/CP git-remote-ftp.exe + LN/CP git-remote-ftps.exe + LINK git.exe + BUILTIN git-receive-pack.exe + BUILTIN git-upload-archive.exe + BUILTIN git-upload-pack.exe + BUILTIN all + SUBDIR git-gui + SUBDIR gitk-git + SUBDIR templates + LINK t/helper/test-fake-ssh.exe + LINK t/helper/test-line-buffer.exe + LINK t/helper/test-svn-fe.exe + LINK t/helper/test-tool.exe + + real 0m23.717s + user 0m1.562s + sys 0m5.210s + + Also, `.zip` files do not have any standardized support for hard-links, + therefore "zipping up" the executables will result in inflated disk + usage. (To keep down the size of the "MinGit" variant of Git for + Windows, which is distributed as a `.zip` file, the hard-links are + excluded specifically.) In addition to that, some programs that are regularly used to assess disk usage fail to realize that those are hard-links, and heavily overcount disk usage. Most notably, this was the case with Windows - Explorer up until the last couple of Windows 10 versions. + Explorer up until the last couple of Windows 10 versions. See e.g. + https://github.com/msysgit/msysgit/issues/58. - To save on the time needed to hard-link these dashed commands, and to - eventually stop shipping with those hard-links on Windows, let's + To save on the time needed to hard-link these dashed commands, with the + plan to eventually stop shipping with those hard-links on Windows, let's introduce a Makefile knob to skip generating them. Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@xxxxxx> 3: ea23ba5e26 ! 3: 99a5328492 ci: stop linking built-ins to the dashed versions @@ Commit message the dashed form, even if we deprecated that a _long_ time ago. For that reason, we just introduced a Makefile knob to skip linking - them. TO make sure that this keeps working, teach the CI + them. To make sure that this keeps working, teach the CI (and PR) builds to skip generating those hard-links. + This is actually not such a big change: e4597aae6590 (run test suite + without dashed git-commands in PATH, 2009-12-02) made sure that our test + suite does not require dashed commands. With this Makefile knob, the + commitment is just a little stronger (running tests with `--with-dashes` + would _still_ not see the dashed form of the built-ins). + + There is a subtle change in behavior with this patch, though: as we no + longer even _build_ the dashed executables, running the test suite would + fail if any of Git's scripted commands (e.g. `git-request-pull`) still + This would have succeeded previously (and would have been unintentional, + of course) because `bin-wrappers/git` sets `GIT_EXEC_PATH` to the + top-level directory (which would still have contained, say, + `git-rev-parse`). + Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@xxxxxx> ## ci/run-build-and-tests.sh ## -- gitgitgadget