Re: pager config for external commands

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 09:26:59AM -0600, Jeffrey Middleton wrote:

> External commands don't appear to support the pager.<cmd> config
> setting. It's implemented for builtins via the call to
> check_pager_config and associated code in run_builtin, but there's
> nothing like that in execv_dashed_external. Is there a reason not to
> implement this for external commands? I can't see one, since the
> --no-pager option does apply to them.

See 4e10738 (Allow per-command pager config, 2008-07-03) for some
discussion.

Basically the problem is that we just call execv("git-<cmd>"). If it
works, then we are running an external, but we no longer have an
opportunity to start the pager. If it doesn't, then we don't necessarily
want to commit our pager choice. We may be running an alias, or we may
simply barf with "no such command".

Later on, we started to use run_command instead of execv, but I don't
think that changes the situation.

I think what we really want to do is split out the "look up in PATH" bit
from run_command, actually find out if we have an external command, and
then commit to running it if it exists. If you're interested in working
on that, I think it would be great.

-Peff