Re: linking libgit.a in C++ projects

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 23:44, cte [off-list ref] wrote:

Using output from the command line utilities as an API has its own set
of problems. For instance, check out some of the difficulties that
gitk and qgit have had to deal with:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2007/11/2/379067.

I beg to differ. If I skimmed the topic correctly, the problems there
were not related to having to parse git's output, but due to the fact
that '--topo-order' is a post-processing operation, which takes long.
Do read the recent discussion between Linus and Roman about that.

Digging into
the git internals and reusing its core functions will always be more
powerful and flexible than parsing command line output.

Sure, but is it worth it? What do you need in your GUI that you cannot
get from the plumbing?

Of course, it
is not always easy; git wasn't written to be easily compiled into a
library and reused (graceful error handling and memory management are
problematic). But I think the right thing to do is to work towards
making the awesome git internals easier to use for other developers so
great tools can continue to be built on top of git.

I do agree with that, libification of git would be really nice.
Especially since that'd mean that integrating it into other languages
(by means of wrappers), such as Python or Ruby, becomes a lot easier.

quoted

There is, use the plumbing, forward compatibility is 95% assured. With
the exception of major releases, for which any plumbing
output/behavior changes will be announced in the changelog, usually
including an explanation on how to change your code to match.

95% assured != correct, IMO :)

Why not? Junio has a very good reputation of keeping git backwards
compatible. The 95% is of course not an actual figure but an
expression meant to indicate "statement is true, minus a few rare case
exceptions".

quoted

In short, use the forc-... errr, plumbing ;).

--
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

It's ok to remove text that you do not respond to, including signatures :P.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier