Re: [GSOC/RFC] GSoC Proposal Draft | Git Beginner

Sidhant Sharma [off-list ref] writes:

On Monday 21 March 2016 12:22 AM, Matthieu Moy wrote:

quoted

Note that it implies writting an almost full-blown option parser to
recognize commands like

ggit --work-tree git --namespace reset --git-dir --hard git log

(just looking for "git", "reset" and "--hard" in the command-line would
not work here).

Could you please elaborate on the above command, I'm unable to
understand its syntax. I thought all git commands follow the
`git command <arguments>` syntax, so using simple string
manipulations and regexes would work. Am I missing something?

The full syntax is

git [global options] <command> [options and arguments for a command]

For example:

git -p log => -p is the option for "git" itself, which means "paginate"
git log -p => -p is the option for "git log", which means "patch"

Options can have stuck or non-stuck form, for example

git --work-tree=foo <=> git --work-tree foo

git --work-tree git --namespace reset --git-dir --hard git log
<=>
git --work-tree=git --namespace=reset --git-dir=--hard git log

(This is probably a stupid command to type, but it's legal)

The later is source of issues for a parser since you can't just iterate
through argv[] and search for problematic commands/options, since you
have to distinguish options themselves (--work-tree above) and option
arguments (foo above).

In my example above, I played with global options (before "git" in the
command-line), but I could also have done that with per-command options
taking arguments, like

git push --repo --force

Here, --force is the name of the repo (again, probably a stupid name,
but why not), not the --force option.

I wasn't sure if we are allowed to code before the actual coding period begins
so I kept it that way. I'll update it now.

You're not "forced" to, but you can write code whenever you like. We've
already seen code written before the application!

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/