Re: Can dependency on /bin/sh be removed?

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

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

>   [credential]
>   helper = cache --socket=/path/to/socket --timeout=123
>
> Arguably we could have gotten away with word-splitting ourselves,
> sticking the result in child_process.args, and avoided the shell. But
> the use of the shell is documented in gitcredentials(7):
>
>   helper
>     The name of an external credential helper, and any associated
>     options. If the helper name is not an absolute path, then the string
>     git credential- is prepended. The resulting string is executed by
>     the shell (so, for example, setting this to foo --option=bar will
>     execute git credential-foo --option=bar via the shell. See the
>     manual of specific helpers for examples of their use.
>
> So users may be depending on that to do "--socket=$HOME/.foo", or even
> more exotic shell constructs.
>
> Again, it's possible that we could detect that no shell metacharacters
> are in play and do the word-splitting ourselves. But at that point I
> think it should go into run-command's prepare_shell_cmd(). That is, I I
> think it could take space out of the list of metachars that force us to
> invoke the shell, and do the word-splitting there. But not having
> thought very hard about it, there are probably corner cases where that
> optimization is detectable by the user (presumably unusual IFS, but
> maybe more?).

Well, I strongly object to an approach for us to "parse" anything.
But even then it would be sensible to formulate:

	argv[0] = sh
	argv[1] = -c
	argv[2] = git-credential-cache --socket=/path/	--timeout=123 "$@"
	argv[3] = -
	argv[4] = NULL

and if there is an argument say "get", extend it to

	argv[0] = sh
	argv[1] = -c
	argv[2] = git-credential-cache --socket=/path/	--timeout=123 "$@"
	argv[3] = -
	argv[4] = get
	argv[5] = NULL

before passing the array to execv(), no?

And with the metacharacter optimization to drop .use_shell we
already have, a single-token /bin/myhelper case would then become

	argv[0] = /bin/myhelper
	argv[1] = get
	argv[2] = NULL

naturally.