Re: [PATCH 0/9] remove dead shell code

On Thu, Sep 02 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Remove dead shell code in git-sh-setup, inspired by parallel
discussion on another topic (but the two don't conflict):
https://lore.kernel.org/git/87lf4f9gre.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com/ (local)

The last two patches were picked from a dropped series of mine
submitted earlier this year, it was dropped because of other more
complex patches that I haven't included here:
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210311001447.28254-1-avarab@gmail.com/ (local)

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (9):
  git-sh-setup: remove unused set_reflog_action() function
  git-sh-setup: remove unused git_editor() function
  git-sh-setup: remove unused git_pager() function
  git-sh-setup: remove unused sane_egrep() function
  git-sh-setup: remove unused require_work_tree_exists() function
  git-sh-setup: move create_virtual_base() to mergetools/p4merge
  git-sh-setup: move peel_committish() function to git-subtree.sh
  git-bisect: remove unused SHA-1 $x40 shell variable
  test-lib: remove unused $_x40 and $_z40 variables

Was "unused" above decided based solely on the presence of in-tree
users?  If that is the case, I do not think we want to take these
sh-setup changes.

I should have remembered to reference the earlier discussion, but I
think we had this exact discussion around a year ago when I submitted
patches to remove git-parse-remote.sh, and decided this direction was
OK.

See a89a2fbfccd (parse-remote: remove this now-unused library,
2020-11-14) and the thread starting at
[ref]:
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20201111173738.GB9902@coredump.intra.peff.net/ (local)

You'll know better what you meant, but I interpreted the docs you added
for git-sh-setup in 850844e28f7 (Documentation/git-sh-setup.txt:
programmer's docs, 2007-01-17) as a guide for in-tree porcelain scripts.

As noted in my recently sent [ref]
(https://lore.kernel.org/git/87lf4f9gre.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com/ (local)) the
eventual goal I have in mind here is to get rid of git-sh-i18n.sh.

If we're set on maintaining these shell libraries indefinitely even
after in-tree users have gone away that pretty much means we can't do
that, which would be unfortunate. We continue paying for quite a bit of
technical debt to extend certain parts of core C git functionality to
*.sh and *.perl.