Re: [RFC/PATCH] doc: git-foo was obsoleted several years ago

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

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

> So replace 'git-foo' with 'git foo'.
>
> Signed-off-by: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
> ---
>  Documentation/git-checkout.txt | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-commit.txt   | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-rebase.txt   | 4 ++--
>  Documentation/git-status.txt   | 4 ++--
>  4 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

Running

    $ head Documentaiton/git-c*.txt

shows that others e.g. git-cat-file.txt also begin with the same
pattern, i.e. git-dashed-command(section) as the first header, and
name section also lists the command in the dashed form, which makes
one wonder why only these four are singled-out. It could have been
"This is merely an RFC to show the kind fo things the submitter
thinks we need to do; the real version, if list agrees that it is a
good thing to do, would cover a lot more files.", but then it would
have saved wasted time guessing if the message said so.

I recall that I wanted to see this change happen myself long time
ago, and suspect that there may have been some reason that prevented
us from doing so.  I might have found that AsciiDoc back then did
not like the input if the headline name "git-checkout(1)" did not
match the filename "git-checkout.txt" and the command in the NAME
section "git-checkout", or links "linkgit:git-checkout[1]" from
other pages couldn't have SP there, or something silly like that.

Also doesn't our build infrastructure slurp the one-line description
"git-checkout - Checkout a branch ..." from these files and expect a
dash to be there?

In short, I personally do prefer to see dashless form at the top of
the manpage, if it does not break other things, and there may need
changes necessary to avoid breaking other things may to files other
than these documentation-proper source files.

> diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> index ca118ac..8d98383 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
> -git-checkout(1)
> +git checkout(1)
>  ===============
>  
>  NAME
>  ----
> -git-checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
> +git checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
>  
>  SYNOPSIS
>  --------
> ...