Re: [RFC] Re: Convert 'git blame' to parse_options()

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 10:44:24AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> And to solve that _single_ problem, I wanted parse_options() to be able 
> to:
> 
>  - stop at unknown options (so that I could hand-parse them)
> 
>  - ignore unknown options (so that I could parse all the ones I knew 
>    about, and then either hand-parse the rest, or just pass them on to 
>    _another_ function that used some arbitrary model to parse the parts it 
>    knew about)
> 
> See? Single issue.

OK, fair enough. You are working towards a single goal. But I think
there is a flaw with that one sub-part of your goal (specifically your
second bullet point). I don't care about the other parts, and in fact I
even said "this is a fine way of doing that".

> And I even sent out a single patch for it. That single patch, btw, was 
> even rather small. 
> 
> Did you ever look at that patch? Did you ever look at the code I was 
> trying to have use parse_options()? No.

How can you even say something so ridiculous? Were you sitting at my
computer all day yesterday, making sure I didn't read your patch? No?
Funnily enough, I was there. And guess what I saw? Yes, it was me
READING YOUR PATCH (in a mirror, of course).

But I don't expect you to have a camera installed over my shoulder. So I
guess you would have had to just content yourself with THE EMAILS WHERE I
MENTION YOUR PATCH AND ITS EFFECTS.

> You constantly try to change the discussion to be about SOMETHIGN ELSE.
> 
> For example, you keep on bringing up this TOTAL RED HERRING:
> 
> >   - It is impossible for that mechanism to be correct in all cases, due
> >     to the syntactic rules for command lines. IOW, you cannot parse an
> >     element until you know the function of the element to the left.
> 
> NOBODY F*CKIGN CARES!

I care. Apparently Junio cared in the thread that I pointed out earlier.
Other commands that parse the options will care, if we are to ever port
them to parse_options. I understand that you don't care about those
things, and you only want git-blame to work.  I am merely trying to help
amortize work that goes into fixing git-blame into helping to fix other
commands. To do that, I pointed out a flaw that might prevent the same
solution being used again.

I understand that you are interested in incremental change, and that
doing something now in git-blame is better than doing nothing while we
wait for a longer, more complete solution to arrive. But did I say "No,
we shouldn't apply this patch from Linus because it's not the optimal
solution?" No. Instead, I said "In the meantime, your patch does not
make this particular problem any worse."

> Because what builtin-blame.c *already* does is exactly that.

I KNOW AND I EVEN SAID THAT. But here it is in case you are hard of
hearing:

  From 20080623195314.GA29569@sigill.intra.peff.net:

    "In the meantime, I don't think your patch makes anything _worse_,
    since we already have these sorts of bugs in the current parsing
    code."

  From 20080623183358.GA28941@sigill.intra.peff.net:

    "It's worse than that...Try (with current git-blame...

     $ git blame -n 1 git.gc
     fatal: bad revision '1'

> This is what I'm complaining about with your totally IDIOTIC mails. You're 
> ignoring reality, and talking about how things "ought to work", and never 
> ever apparently looked at how things *do* work.

Again, how in the world can you say that I didn't look at how things do
work WHEN I CUT AND PASTED A SAMPLE TRANSCRIPT SHOWING HOW THEY DO WORK?

BTW, this is the third time you have mentioned the phrase "ought to
work" in a way that is totally disingenuous about what I actually said.
I can understand that perhaps I was not clear in the initial statement.
But I would have thought the other two times I explained it further
would have made it clear. So did you truly not understand my point, or
are you just being intentionally rude?

> The fact is, the one program I wanted to convert already does exactly what 
> you claim is "impossible to be correct in all cases".

And it's not correct as it is now. And we have lived with it. Which is
why I didn't say "your proposal makes things worse." In fact, I said the
opposite.

> So either shut up, or send a patch to fix what you consider a bug. I'm 
> waiting.

I already volunteered to work on it. I'm sorry that the patch didn't
materialize immediately, but I was working on other parts of git, just
as I mentioned when I said I would work on it.

In the meantime, I think Pierre has proposed an alternate approach that
also has promise, so I think it makes sense to see how he progresses
with that rather than potentially duplicate work.

And I will shut up now, because this is obviously getting nowhere. I
just find your responses so rude and misinformed not about technical
matters, but about my statements and my intent that I feel the need to
publicly defend myself.

-Peff