Re: [PATCH] grep: --full-tree

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

I'm not sure I really understand. "git grep" is routinely producing
wrong results for me _now_. I'd like to configure it so that it produces
results more sensible to me. If I am the one who sets the configuration
variable to something more sensible for my workflow, who am I hurting?

Config options are not free - they add code bloat, increase the maintenance
and testing burden, make it harder to explain how Git works if you have to
say things like "if config X is true, then Git does ..., otherwise Git does
..., unless config Y is false, in which case Git does ...", make it harder
to debug when Git doesn't do what you expected if you have to check a bunch
of configs to figure out what the behavior should be, and make it harder to
develop new features since you have to consider how they might interact with
lots of config options.  So I think the bar for adding config options,
especially ones that fundamentally change user visible behavior, should be
set pretty high, and this one doesn't even come close to getting over the
bar.

I like Junio's suggestion to make paths starting with / anchored to the
top.  If that were added then it would be easy for users to tell Git what
they want; they just have to use the right pathspec, which I think is a
very reasonable requirement.

That's my 2 cents....

James