[Open discussion on idea] Git shell prompt daemon

[Alexander Mezin]

2014-03-28 23:24 GMT+07:00 Tim Niemueller <tim at niemueller.de>:
> In general, do you intend to extend the bash, or have something started
> with the bashrc/profile/your-shell-file-here?
The preferred way for me is "something from bashrc/etc."
However, I don't know how to change prompt dynamically when user
doesn't run any commands/press keys.

Maybe both ways could be implemented: patch/extension for shell, and
something that generates PS1 every time as fallback.
Though I don't think bash devs will be happy to accept such patch.

Mikolaj, what do you think about it?

> One typical complaint
> about stuff executed each time to form the prompt is that it can slow
> things down considerably. Here your libgit solution could help, but how
> would this scale to more plugins without a large performance penalty?
> Maybe some info about the architecture this would use could help here.
Actually, performance problems is what I personally want to solve in
this project.
Daemon loads only once, so loading a lot of plugins shouldn't be a problem.

I didn't try to think about architecture yet. Designing good
architecture is a part of the project, and I will start working on it
only after I will have everything working for git.
However, I don't think there will be something complex.

> The daemon idea shounds sensible, talking via dbus?
D-bus isn't neccessary here. Socket should be sufficient.

> Still, how would this be integrated with the command line.
Actually, answer to this question is at beginning of the message.

> And ahead of time: sounds like
> it could become a second tracker/beagle desaster caching tons of unused
> data being one more nuisance...
As I noted in my proposal, the only way I see here is trial-and-error.
But I am sure something will work.

> I do think this is useful, there are just so many questions and details
> unclear currently.
It's boring when everything is clear from the beginning, isn't it?