Re: [PATCH] for-each-repo: do nothing on empty config

On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 3:50 PM Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Is the API of this command ideal? It feels odd to force the user to
specify required input via a command-line option rather than just as a
positional argument. In other words, since the config variable name is
mandatory, an alternative invocation format would be:

    git for-each-repo <config-var> <cmd>

Or not to use any configuration variable (or not to have the
for-each-repo subcommand at all) and let the users write
something along the lines of...

        git config --get-all <config-var> |
        while read repo
        do
                ( cd "$repo" && <cmd> )
        done

which is not all that bad and much more flexible.

I had the same thought/question about why git-for-each-repo exists,
though I didn't verbalize it since I assumed the reason was covered
during the original discussion or patch submission, which I did not
follow. I can see this command possibly being useful for Windows users
who don't necessarily have a Unix-like shell or MS PowerShell with
which to open-code the loop you illustrated. This may be especially
important when this is used for some sort of scheduled maintenance on
Windows, as a guess.