Tao Klerks <tao@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > If you get it wrong, an inconvenient or even bad > thing happens: If you're in a GUI context and you forget to say > `--gui`, then you get the CLI tool - not the end of the world, you > might argue. If you're in a non-GUI context and you say `--gui`, you > get a (hopefully intelligible) error about not finding a display, or > worst case, you hang - and git doesn't know what happened, the > messaging has to assume you aborted explicitly. The worst case I can think of is if you have a machine that allows a persistent virtual graphical session (remote desktop). You can go there, open a terminal and create a screen session, which captures the $DISPLAY in effect. You may disconnect from the screen session before you disconnect from the remote desktop. As the remote desktop is persistent, the $DISPLAY would be valid even after you disconnect from there. Then you ssh into the machine and connect to the screen session. If you say "xterm &" in that screen session, a new window with a terminal will open and be shown on that remote display session, which you cannot see until you reconnect to the remote desktop. Running "git mergetool --gui" would be the same. With the proposed patch, the experience would become even worse in that scenario, I am afraid. "git mergetool" (without "--[no-]gui") would detect the presense of $DISPLAY and start a GUI mergetool that you cannot view or interact with ;-). You need to explicitly say "git mergetool --no-gui" in such a case to force use of cli tool. Even with that caveat, I think the proposed behaviour would be a net improvement. I almost always work in non-GUI environment, but I can see many people work in both and depending on their environment wish to use the best tool for the situation. > If there were a way to get git to autoselect "--gui" by presence of > the DISPLAY, as it does for the *default* mergetool, then this kind of > flow would be much more intuitive, usable, etc. > > I'm not sure whether I'm explaining better, or just repeating myself, > so I'll stop here :) Hopefully your explanation was clear enough. Others may be able to offer solution better than "look at DISPLAY and choose --[no-]gui when neither is given from the command line", but I think at least I understand your motivation behind this change. Thanks.
