Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] rebase -i: use config file format to save author information

Christian Couder [off-list ref] writes:

This is better than saving in a shell script, because it will make
it much easier to port "rebase -i" to C.

Hmph.

We used to parse a commit object in one go into variables, and I would
have imagined that a rewrite in C will read a commit object to get the
author information in variables in-core, without having to write any
temporary file.

But with your patch, it starts to use a temporary file, and forces the C
rewrite to do the same.  It closes the door for a more efficient rewrite.

Why is this a good change?

This also removes some sed regexps and some "eval"s.

That is a correct description of what the patch does.

But the use of sed and eval is an implementation detail.  As long as they
are used correctly, I do not think it is a grave offense to use them, and
removal is not an improvement.

A possible argument (or excuse) you _could_ make to justify this change, I
think, is that such a temporary file with known name will allow a hook
script that is run during a rebase to learn the authorship information of
the commit being rebased.  This has been hidden inside variables without
getting exported, and this patch defines a way for the scripts to get at
it if they wanted to.

I didn't check if there is such a codepath that involves hooks, if there
are plausible scenarios that they would want to learn that information,
nor if the information is hard to get otherwise, though.