Re: [PATCH 07/14] revert: Introduce struct to keep command-line options

[Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>]

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry about the delayed replay -- I intended to reply to this earlier;
I'm not sure why I didn't.

Jonathan Nieder writes:
>> My justification: in later steps, we'd want to be able to mix
>> "pick" and "revert" instructions in the same instruction sheet.  This
>> will essentially require the parser to return a commit + a replay_opts
>> struct (which will contain the action information).
>
> Side note: is it intended to support insns like
>
>  pick A..B
>
> ?

I wouldn't point to that instruction specifically, but yes- I plan to
support complex instructions in future.

> Anyway, the above explanation about the intended use for "struct
> replay_opts" (it needs to be small, I guess?) would be a good thing
> to add to the commit message, too.  Basically, whatever information a
> person needs in order to understand the design is a useful thing to
> add.

I'm not yet sure about this.  On a related note, I'd like to ask: will
we encounter two commands like "am" and "revert" which have the same
command-line option name for two different functionality?  If not, I'd
probably like to stick to the per-session opts for as long as possible
(ie. until someone finds a good usecase + implementation for
per-action command-line options).

>> Yes, I'm definitely considering exposing parse_args in the future,
>> especially since I want to support command-line options in my
>> instruction sheet.
>
> Hm, I am not sure what to think about this direction (is the git
> sequencer actually just a fast git shell?  in that case, why is pick
> spelled "pick" instead of "cherry-pick"?).  Maybe it's a good thing.

This is a very important question.  Yes, it's intentionally named
"pick" and not "cherry-pick" because I don't want the Sequencer to
merely be a fast git shell.  That's part of the reason I don't want
arbitrary command-line options on the insn sheet.  I want the
possibility of accommodating complex instructions in the insn sheet
(single instructions that might even involve talking to more than one
git command).  For the same reason, I also felt that "action" is the
most appropriate name for the first word in each line in the insn
sheet.  What I'd call an "instruction" is an action + the relevant
option(s) picked up from the opts sheet.

-- Ram