On Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 06:29:12 PM GMT+3, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> It is a bit more nuanced than that, though. Here is what we say:
>
> - Even though "local" is not part of POSIX, we make heavy use of it
> in our test suite. We do not use it in scripted Porcelains, and
> hopefully nobody starts using "local" before all shells that matter
> support it (notably, ksh from AT&T Research does not support it yet).
>
> For the purpose of git-prompt, I think it should be OK ...
> to declare that we now support shells
> other than bash and zsh as long as they are reasonably POSIX and
> support "local" that is dynamic.
I have to admit I missed "in our test suite".
Right, so no "local" in Porcelains, but yes in the test suite.
But yes, agreed, because it supports so many more shells.
The commit "git-prompt: ta-da! document.." does document it.
> (without
> "local", it is harder, if not impossible, to clobber end-user's
> shell variable namespace with various temporaries we need to use
> during prompt computation)
It actually is technically possible with git-prompt.sh, with 1 LOC.
See the "anecdote" at end of the same "ta-da!" commit message which
does exactly that. Though for obvious reason we can't really do that.
> Do we know what kind of "local" is ksh93 adding? The same as their
> "typeset" that is not dynamic? That is so different from what others
> do and scripts expect to be all that useful, I am afraid.
I would think it has to be similar enough to other shells, or else it
creates a compatibility nightmare IMO. But that's a guess.
Somewhat off topic, so apologies if this shouldn't be here:
As for the Porcelains, I have to assume that it can be unpleasant
to maintain big scripts without "local". Would there be an interest
in adding a facility with the same semantics as "local", but posix
compliant (and also posix-ish shells), for use in Porcelains?
It's not a drop-in replacement, but the syntax is reasonable IMO:
locals myfunc x y
_myfunc () {
echo "$? $1 $2"
x=1 y=2
return 33
}
x=x; unset y
(exit 42) || myfunc foo bar
echo "$? $x ${y-unset}"
Prints:
42 foo bar
33 x unset
"locals myfunc x y" creates a wrapper function "myfunc" which saves
the state of $x and $y, calls _myfunc "$@", then restores the state
(and propagates the initial and final $? appropriately). Recursion is
supported, the wrapper doesn't create additional variables, and no
subshells are used at the wrapper (also not at "locals").
The implementation of "locals" is small (10-20 LOC), but we can't
expect scripts to embed it, so it would need to be sourced (dot).
If there is interest in such thing, let me know, and I can submit
a patch (independent of this patchset) to adds such file which
can then be sourced by other scripts in order to use "locals".
Unrelated, and it might not mean much, but I did want to thank you
for maintaining git all those years.
