Re: [PATCH/RFC 1/4] Allow creation of arbitrary git-shell commands

[Greg Brockman <gdb@MIT.EDU>]

>> This provides a mechanism for the server to expose custom
>> functionality to clients.  My particular use case is that I would like
>> a way of discovering all repositories available for cloning.  A
>> client that clones via
>>   git clone user@example.com
>> can invoke a command by
>>   ssh user@example.com $command
>
> Please have a blank line above and below sample command display like these
> for readability.
Sounds good.

>> +     /* Shell should be spawned with cwd in the git user's home directory */
>> +     if (chdir(COMMAND_DIR))
>> +             die("unrecognized command '%s'", prog);
>
> Hmm, could you justify "should be" above please?
>
> An example would be "All of the custom commands I wrote to give added
> features to users at my installation wanted to be in that directory, not
> at the user's home directory, as they mostly operated on files in that
> directory", but please do not make me (or other reviewers) guess why.
>
> What I am getting at is that it may be more natural and useful to run
> these custom commands in the user's $HOME directory---you would need to
> make sure that execl() finds the command you get from the request, perhaps
> by prefixing COMMAND_DIR / to the command name, though.
Err, good point.  The commands I wrote end up running 'cd ..' anyway
:).  Instead just running these commands in the user's $HOME does make
a lot more sense.

Thanks everyone for the comments thus far.