On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 09:19:10PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 08 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > Taylor Blau <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > >> In my experience I *rarely* rely on test-helpers when debugging wedged > >> repositories, and much more often end up either in gdb, or in an > >> anonymized copy of the repository on a different server. I would imagine > >> that others have similar experiences. > >> > >> So unless we had a much more compelling reason to have the test helpers > >> more readily available, I do not think that the risk our users will > >> begin to depend on these unstable tools is worth taking. > > > > OK. It sounds like a sensible argument against such a change. > > It's an argument against not flipping "make installing them be optional" > flag on by default, but we could otherwise move some of t/helper to > builtin/, which would help by encouraging us to write at least > boilerplate docs for them. > > Git developers & similar parties could then set them to be installed for > ad-hoc debugging. I was talking about users not heeding our warning, but I'm still not really that compelled by making the test-helpers an optional component in our build. I am pretty sure I have only reached for the test-helpers less than half a dozen times over the years, and *much* more often find myself in a debugger. If I'm in the minority (and there really are a lot of administrators who find it useful to have the test-tools on hand), then that is a different story, but my guiding assumption is that that isn't the case. > I really don't buy the argument that there's no amount of warnings in > our documentation that we can include which would give us future license > to willy-nilly change certain things. My point was only that we cannot guarantee that users read or care about our documentation. Thanks, Taylor
