Re: [RFC/PATCH] shell: allow 'help' command to disable interactive shell

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Jonathan Nieder [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

The trouble is that I can't imagine a canned message that everyone
will like.  (For example, I quite dislike the current one.)  That's
exactly the situation in which some configurability is helpful.

I am not saying we should have a perfect canned message everybody
likes and not have any configurability.  I however think we can aim
to come up with a message that covers 80% of site administrators who
do not care too much and just want git-shell to allow the standard
services without giving any custom command.

Isn't the current message meant to be that?  Just removing the "hint:"
line would be enough to leave me happy with it.

And for the remaining 20% of those who do not like the canned
message but still do not need any custom command, I think it is way
suboptimal to force them to create git-shell-commands directory for
47 users his host gives git-shell access to, and copy the "help"
script to all of them, only to get a customized message.

Isn't that a criticism of the git-shell-commands facility in general?
If it is common to have a lot of users with distinct home directories
but all with git-shell as their login shell, then the
git-shell-commands should not go in their home directory to begin
with, no?

I think sharing a home directory is fine and the normal thing to do
with such a restricted account, fwiw, so I am not the one to guess
what people who do something different would find most useful.  Maybe
I am not the right person to have proposed this patch in the first
place --- I saw something that looked wrong and proposed what I
thought was a reasonable fix, but I am not actively depending on
git-shell myself, so...

*shrug*

Hope that helps,
Jonathan