Git pager woes

Git pager woes

[J.R. Mauro]

Git doesn't set special options to it's pager command if the LESS
environment variable is set. I noticed when I started using Gentoo
that git was putting all output into a pager even if it were less than
one page, which it didn't do under Ubuntu. A fellow Gentoo user
confirms this; apparently Gentoo's defaults set LESS, but without a
-F.

Should git always tack on a -F when it invokes less, or should this be
put on the user to look up what to do? Or should I go complain to the
Gentoo folks?

Re: Git pager woes

[Andreas Ericsson]

J.R. Mauro wrote:
> Git doesn't set special options to it's pager command if the LESS
> environment variable is set. I noticed when I started using Gentoo
> that git was putting all output into a pager even if it were less than
> one page, which it didn't do under Ubuntu. A fellow Gentoo user
> confirms this; apparently Gentoo's defaults set LESS, but without a
> -F.
> 
> Should git always tack on a -F when it invokes less, or should this be
> put on the user to look up what to do? Or should I go complain to the
> Gentoo folks?

Go complain to Gentoo. If the user has set it explicitly (even if that
happens behind the user's back), we absolutely mustn't fiddle with it.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

Re: Git pager woes

[J.R. Mauro]

Ok. Thanks.

Re: Git pager woes

[Matthieu Moy]

"J.R. Mauro" <jrm8005@gmail.com> writes:

> Git doesn't set special options to it's pager command if the LESS
> environment variable is set.

Yes, this is by design: if you customized less, git obeys the
configuration you've set. Otherwise, it takes a default wich is more
appropriate to git that what "less" does without $LESS set.

That policy isn't perfect, but I think any other would be worse: I
wouldn'l like git to change my configuration if I did set $LESS
myself, and I also prefer git's default to LESS default when it comes
to paging git commands (but I like less's default for other uses, for
example, I like the man page to disapear when I close it).

-- 
Matthieu