Re: If you would write git from scratch now, what would you change?

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 18:11:43 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:

Jakub Narebski [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

If you would write git from scratch now, from the beginning, without
concerns for backwards compatibility, what would you change, or what
would you want to have changed?

Get rid of plumbing at the command line level.  It is confusing to

No, please. It's extremely useful. It should be a bit more hidden, but it's
a big advantage of git that the plumbing is available.

users, and command line arguments, exec calls and I/O streams are not
efficient and reasonably typed mechanisms for the kind of operations
done in plumbing.  Instead using a good extensible portable scripting
language (I consider Lua quite suitable in that regard, but it is
conceivable that something with a native list type supporting easy
sorts, merges and selections could be more efficient) and implementing
plumbing in that or in C would have been preferable for creating the
porcelain.

POSIX shell is really the best extensible portable scripting language
available for the job. Because the whipuptitude is the most important
property and shell is simply best at one-liners. And since you use it
for regular work (running editor, compiler, git porcelain), it is the
obvious choice for whiping up a short function.

That would keep plumbing out of the hair of users and make it easier to
cobble together extensions and variations with non-trivial internal
dataflow.

Shell scripts have also proven to be a constant hassle with regard to
portability and bugs (like underquoting).

-- 
						 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec [off-list ref]