Re: Re* Regulator updates for 3.3

[Junio C Hamano <junio@pobox.com>]

Pete Harlan <pgit@pcharlan.com> writes:

> On 01/10/2012 10:59 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> There may be existing scripts that leave the standard input and the
>> standard output of the "git merge" connected to whatever environment the
>> scripts were started, and such invocation might trigger the above
>> "interactive session" heuristics. Such scripts can export GIT_MERGE_LEGACY
>> environment variable set to "yes" to force the traditional behaviour.
>
> The name GIT_MERGE_LEGACY gives no clue about what flavor of legacy
> merge behavior is being enabled.  Something like GIT_MERGE_LEGACY_EDIT
> might be clearer, or perhaps just have GIT_MERGE_EDIT=0 to get the old
> behavior without reference to whether or not that behavior is
> considered legacy.

Hrm.

The only case your suggestion may make a difference would be when we find
another earlier UI mistake we would want to correct in a backward
incompatible way that affects _existing_ scripts.

With your suggestion, they need to export "GIT_MERGE_EDIT=0" today, and
they will need to update again to export "GIT_MERGE_SOMETHINGELSE=0" when
such an incompatible change comes.

With a single "GIT_MERGE_LEGACY=YesPlease", they can be future-proofed today
and will not be affected when we make another incompatible change.

So I am not sure why separating the big-red-switch into smaller pieces
would be an improvement, especially wnen the scripts that want to specify
finer-grained control of features can use "--[no-]edit" options to
explicitly ask for it.