Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] avoid running "git-subcmd" in the dashed form

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

Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> writes:

> Would an interesting in-between step include removing the dashed
> forms for builtins that didn't exist in Git 2.0?

I am not sure if it makes much sense to treat newer and older
built-in commands differently.

Imagine that an old-timer wrote a script by somebody who trusted the
"futz with PATH and you can use git-foo" promise before Git 2.0 and
then the script was inherited by relatively new users.  Adhering to
the "when in doubt, mimic the surrounding code", which is usually a
good discipline to follow, these new users, who are now in charge of
maintaining the script, would add any new calls in "git-foo" form to
match the local convention in good faith.  And the resulting code
would have been working just fine.

Before such a "in-between step" is thrown at them, that is, at which
point it stops working if they were unlucky that they used a
relatively new built-ins.  Typically new end-users would not know
which ones are old built-ins and which ones are new, I suspect.

I do agree with Dscho that "we won't let you use builtin in dashed
form before you export an enviornment" I wrote was not a good way to
gauge the usage of on-disk builtins.  We should move the on-disk
builtins to a different directory and have them point at the
location with their $PATH as the escape hatch, as Dscho suggested,
if we were to do this for real, I'd think.

Thanks.