On Mon, Oct 01, 2018 at 07:23:58PM -0700, Taylor Blau wrote:
> +core.alternateRefsCommand::
> + When advertising tips of available history from an alternate, use the
> shell to
> + execute the specified command instead of linkgit:git-for-each-ref[1].
> The
> + first argument is the absolute path of the alternate. Output must
> contain one
> + hex object id per line (i.e., the same as produce by `git for-each-ref
> + --format='%(objectname)'`).
> ++
> +This is useful when a repository only wishes to advertise some of its
> +alternate's references as `.have`'s. For example, to only advertise branch
> +heads, configure `core.alternateRefsCommand` to the path of a script which
> runs
> +`git --git-dir="$1" for-each-ref --format='%(objectname)' refs/heads`.
> ++
> +Note that the configured value is executed in a shell, and thus
> +linkgit:git-for-each-ref[1] by itself does not work, as scripts have to
> handle
> +the path argument specially.
This last paragraph is trying to fix the wrong-impression that we
discussed in the last round. But I'm not sure it doesn't make things
more confusing. ;)
Specifically, the problem isn't the shell. The issue is that we pass the
repo path as an argument to the command. So either:
- it's a real command that we run, in which case git-for-each-ref does
not take a repo path argument and so doesn't work; or
- it's a shell snippet, in which case the argument is appended to the
snippet (and here's where you can get into a rabbit hole of
explaining how our shell invocation works, and we should avoid that)
Can we just say:
Note that you cannot generally put `git for-each-ref` directly into
the config value, as it does not take a repository path as an argument
(but you can wrap the command above in a shell script).
> [...]
The rest of the patch looks good to me, along with the other three
(modulo the "expect" fixup you already sent).
-Peff
