Re: Use of vcs_info

["Benjamin R. Haskell" <zsh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010, Frank Terbeck wrote:

> Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
> > I don't fully understand how best to use vcs_info.
> 
> First just to make sure: you did find the documentation in 
> zshcontrib(1), right? (man zshcontrib | less -p GATHER)

I could've sworn I'd looked in zshall.  Apparently not.  Guess I'd only 
googled it.  (Thanks also to Mikael.)


> > My first question is:  what's with the weird $vcs_info_msg_#_ 
> > variable names? (Why not an array?)
> 
> Those variables are exported (there was a reason for it, I don't 
> remember what it was exactly). And you can't export arrays.

Ah, okay.  So... why the trailing underscore?  Not a huge deal, just 
curious.


> > But, beyond that, my big question is: Is there a way to access the 
> > vcs_comm variable that's sprinkled throughout the VCS_Info functions 
> 
> You shouldn't.
> That's an associative array to allow bidirectional communication 
> between various parts of vcs_info. If you want to know some internals, 
> I could explain them, but for *using* vcs_info, you do not need to 
> know anything about that particular variable.

Ah.  I misinterpreted the '_comm' as 'common', not 'communication'.  I 
hadn't really delved too deeply yet, but it looked like that var was 
updated in a few places that were grabbing items I wanted to examine.


> > directory?  My guess is that the easiest thing for me to do would be 
> > to simply remove the 'local -Ax vcs_comm' line in vcs_info, but 
> > everything else is so well-organized that I figured I must just be 
> > missing some way to get that variable exported.
> 
> What do you need that variable for? Maybe if you'd explain what you want
> to do, I'd have a suggestion.

(idem)


> > The most helpful page so far was Frank Terbeck's prompt_ft_setup 
> > page[1].  Otherwise I'd've had to have read even more of the code to 
> > figure out the various
> >
> > zstyle ':vcs_info:*' actionformats ''
> > zstyle ':vcs_info:*' formats ''
> > zstyle ':vcs_info:(sv[nk]|bzr):*' branchformat
> >
> > tricks that are available.
> >
> > I already do a bunch of stuff in my pre_cmd and pre_exec functions, and 
> > I'd really like to just add some things to my prompt conditioned on 
> > whether (for example) the current git repo is in a rebase, and maybe a 
> > shortened version of the branch name.  So, is there a way to get the 
> > info out of vcs_info?
> 
> Yes, there is.
> The "shortened" make it a little trickier, though. In currently 
> released code (4.3.7), you can make one format to just be "%b" and 
> change the corresponding variable after calling vcs_info your precmd 
> function.
> 
> Vcs_info in CVS has hooks. The manual explains them in some detail and 
> gives some simpler examples. You can use a "set-message" hook to get 
> full control over what will be inserted for the branch-name. That is 
> probably what you want.
> 

Thanks for the pointers.  I saw the hook stuff in the git repo, but I 
think I'm going to do something like your format suggestion: just make 
the various formats easily-splitable, and parse out what I want.

The two things I want are abbreviated git branch names (not sure what 
I'll decide on how to abbreviate), and to modify my entire prompt when 
in a git rebase (as a big visual reminder to myself).

Both of those would be easy-peasy if I had some kind of data structure 
storing the parsed VCS data (rather than a formatted string), hence the 
initial email.

-- 
Thanks,
Ben