Re: [PATCH] Let git-help prefer man-pages installed with this version of git

Sergei Organov wrote:

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

 >> Having written that, it is very tempting to further clarify the above:

quoted

    Usually, if a user has his own version of git and regularly uses it
    by having the non-system executable directory (e.g. $HOME/bin/git)
    early in his $PATH, its corresponding documentation would also be in
    a non-system documentation directory (e.g. $HOME/man) early in his
    $MANPATH, and this change is a no-op.  The only case this change
    matters is where the user installs his own git outside of his $PATH
    and $MANPATH, and explicitly runs his git executable
    (e.g. "$HOME/junk/git-1.5.4/bin/git diff").

First, I don't think you need to clarify like this. It is just
implementation detail of git-help that it uses 'man', and thus
implicitly relies on MANPATH. The essential thing has been already
stated above: git-help should show correct documentation.

Second, the change is still useful even if user did put custom path to
'git' into its PATH, but didn't even thought of customizing
MANPATH. Besides, a user could be entirely unaware of 'man' the utility.

The number of users in the entire world that are completely unaware of
the 'man' utility but still manages to build git and install it in a
non-default path can probably be counted on one hand of a 65 year old
saw-mill worker.

I'm not sure if we're doing them a greater service by DWIMing this or
by telling them about the 'man' utility.

quoted

How typical would that use be, to run your git executable by always
naming it by path without relying on $PATH environment variable?

To tell the truth, I'd prefer to just use -M option of man and don't
rely on MANPATH at all, so that 'git help' will issue error if there is
no documentation installed for this particular version of git.

Does "man -M" work everywhere, or is your patch opening a can of worms
to get probably-not-needed functionality?

Otoh, you submitted a patch, so there are probably a few people out
there that care about this. I'm not one of them, so I'll shut up now
that my lunch is over ;-)

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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