Documentation / technical / api-builtin.txton commit Merge branch 'maint' (5e3a3a1)
   1builtin API
   2===========
   3
   4Adding a new built-in
   5---------------------
   6
   7There are 4 things to do to add a built-in command implementation to
   8Git:
   9
  10. Define the implementation of the built-in command `foo` with
  11  signature:
  12
  13        int cmd_foo(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix);
  14
  15. Add the external declaration for the function to `builtin.h`.
  16
  17. Add the command to `commands[]` table in `handle_internal_command()`,
  18  defined in `git.c`.  The entry should look like:
  19
  20        { "foo", cmd_foo, <options> },
  21+
  22where options is the bitwise-or of:
  23
  24`RUN_SETUP`::
  25
  26        Make sure there is a Git directory to work on, and if there is a
  27        work tree, chdir to the top of it if the command was invoked
  28        in a subdirectory.  If there is no work tree, no chdir() is
  29        done.
  30
  31`USE_PAGER`::
  32
  33        If the standard output is connected to a tty, spawn a pager and
  34        feed our output to it.
  35
  36`NEED_WORK_TREE`::
  37
  38        Make sure there is a work tree, i.e. the command cannot act
  39        on bare repositories.
  40        This only makes sense when `RUN_SETUP` is also set.
  41
  42. Add `builtin/foo.o` to `BUILTIN_OBJS` in `Makefile`.
  43
  44Additionally, if `foo` is a new command, there are 3 more things to do:
  45
  46. Add tests to `t/` directory.
  47
  48. Write documentation in `Documentation/git-foo.txt`.
  49
  50. Add an entry for `git-foo` to `command-list.txt`.
  51
  52. Add an entry for `/git-foo` to `.gitignore`.
  53
  54
  55How a built-in is called
  56------------------------
  57
  58The implementation `cmd_foo()` takes three parameters, `argc`, `argv,
  59and `prefix`.  The first two are similar to what `main()` of a
  60standalone command would be called with.
  61
  62When `RUN_SETUP` is specified in the `commands[]` table, and when you
  63were started from a subdirectory of the work tree, `cmd_foo()` is called
  64after chdir(2) to the top of the work tree, and `prefix` gets the path
  65to the subdirectory the command started from.  This allows you to
  66convert a user-supplied pathname (typically relative to that directory)
  67to a pathname relative to the top of the work tree.
  68
  69The return value from `cmd_foo()` becomes the exit status of the
  70command.