RE: How dow we educate our users to configure less?

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Randall S. Becker wrote:
> On June 28, 2021 4:51 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >To: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>; 'Felipe Contreras' <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>; git@vger.kernel.org
> >Cc: 'Junio C Hamano' <gitster@pobox.com>; git@vger.kernel.org; 'Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason' <avarab@gmail.com>; 'Jeff King'
> ><peff@peff.net>
> >Subject: RE: How dow we educate our users to configure less?
> >
> >Randall S. Becker wrote:
> >> On June 28, 2021 4:18 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >> >Randall S. Becker wrote:
> >
> >> >I'm saying the **opposite**. I'm saying this should be done in builtin/help.c *not* .profile.
> >> >
> >> >> Admittedly, I am in a highly complex situation, but it is a real
> >> >> one (ok, two because of a diverged path between NonStop and MVS)
> >> >> and there are hundreds in a similar situation.
> >> >
> >> >My patch [1] should work in all your environments.
> >>
> >> Your patch will work in the environments but not in the use case I
> >> tried to explain. I do not want a single configuration of less colours
> >> in .git/config or ~/.gitconfig. That is not going to work in my
> >> situation. I have multiple less colour values that would apply within
> >> a given arbitrary timeframe. The configuration depends on the specific
> >> terminal type set in the environment, either dumb, vt220, t653x,
> >> xterm, cygwin, all of which may happy in short succession. I do not
> >> expect it to be practical to change my git settings to conform to this
> >> patch, so I am trying to point out that I do not see how it can solve
> >> my issue.
> >
> >Are you talking about color settings? If so, what are the values of
> >LESS_TERMCAP_* that you have configured?
> >
> >> The current support, using the TERM environment variable, which is
> >> passed to git in all situations either by the system itself on through
> >> scripts as is the case with Jenkins, is mostly sufficient for less and
> >> git to find its appropriate termcap on all platforms that I use on an
> >> ongoing basis (Windows Cygwin, NonStop OSS, NonStop GUARDIAN, Ubuntu,
> >> MacOS, MVS, USS, Jenkins). The NonStop GUARDIAN environment does
> >> present some paging issues that do not work correctly in some cases
> >> with some terminal emulators, but that's the emulator's problem, not
> >> the termcap specifically.
> >>
> >> So what am I missing?
> >
> >You still have not explained why this would not work on any of your
> >environments:
> >
> >  setenv("LESS_TERMCAP_md", GIT_COLOR_BOLD_RED, 0);
> >  setenv("LESS_TERMCAP_me", GIT_COLOR_RESET, 0);
> 
> I am not saying it will not work technically. Suppose I have a
> terminal session using t653x, which is not vt220 compatible - meaning
> it does not use GIT_COLOR_BOLD_RED or even have the concept of bold
> red) and do a git log or git help. I have another session using vt220,
> which works as configured. I have a third session running in Jenkins
> that keeps things up to date and is a terminal type dumb.

Does `git grep` show colors?

> Your patch appears to imply that I need to run git config to change
> the values associated with colours to make things work, correct?

No, you just need to enable color.man

  git -c color.man=true help git

> So how do the three sessions all work simultaneously or do I only get
> to use one of them at a time and reconfigure when I want to use a
> different terminal?

Do you need to reconfigure anything for `git grep` to show color?

-- 
Felipe Contreras