[Dctrl-tools-devel] Bug#525525: Bug#525525: Bug#525525: Bug#525525: [PATCH] grep-dctrl: add --compact option

Jeff King peff at peff.net
Thu Nov 3 19:15:13 UTC 2011


On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 08:58:42PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 02:33:50PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> > If we really do think it's a compatibility issue, then is the right
> > solution not to keep it as-is, and add a new "always separate" flag?
> 
> It's not that simple.  Of course there's a compatibility issue.  The question
> is whether the compatibility interest trumps the consistency interest that
> prompted this change.

Right. We deal with this all the time in git, and our usual approach is
to introduce the new behavior as an option, let scripts who want that
option use it, and deprecate the existing behavior for scripts, and then
eventually flip the default. We can do that here. But it's a lot of
work.

Whether it's worth it depends on how conservative you want to be with
breaking existing scripts. I'm just a casual user of dctrl-tools, so I
don't have a strong opinion on what's normal or what direction you want
to take it. I'm just mentioning all the options as I see them.

Whatever happens, I just want to still be able to get the old behavior
somehow. So I guess I'm asking what _you_ want, and then I'll code
around that. ;)

-Peff





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