Re: [PATCH 1/1 v2] pager: move pager-specific setup into the build

On Mon, Aug 01, 2016 at 04:03:40PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Eric Wong [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

From: Junio C Hamano <redacted>

Allowing PAGER_ENV to be set at build-time allows us to move
pager-specific knowledge out of our build.  Currently, this
allows us to set a better default for FreeBSD where more(1)
is the same binary as less(1).

Thanks for resurrecting, but I am not sure what "a better default"
is from the above description and with the patch.  Even though a
naive reading of the above (i.e. "less" and "more" are the same)
makes me expect that the patch will give the same set of default
environment settings to those on FreeBSD, you give LESS=FRX and
MORE=-R, i.e. they are configured differently.

I wondered about this, too. They are the same binary, but calling less
as "more" (or setting LESS_IS_MORE) causes less to behave "like more".
Looking at the manpage, none the usual FRX options is affected. So in
theory we could just set MORE=FRX on FreeBSD.

That would be bad a idea in general, as other non-less implementations
of more might get confused.  "more" is in POSIX, and so is $MORE (and it
does not understand any of our options).

You could also make the knob "MORE_IS_LESS" or something, and just
blindly copy $LESS to $MORE. That's a bad idea, though, if somebody does
stick one of the incompatible flags in the build options.

-Peff