Documentation / technical / api-builtin.txton commit gitweb: Convert generated contents to utf8 in commitdiff_plain (7720224)
   1builtin API
   2===========
   3
   4Adding a new built-in
   5---------------------
   6
   7There are 4 things to do to add a bulit-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
  22  where 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. Add `builtin-foo.o` to `BUILTIN_OBJS` in `Makefile`.
  37
  38Additionally, if `foo` is a new command, there are 3 more things to do:
  39
  40. Add tests to `t/` directory.
  41
  42. Write documentation in `Documentation/git-foo.txt`.
  43
  44. Add an entry for `git-foo` to the list at the end of
  45  `Documentation/cmd-list.perl`.
  46
  47
  48How a built-in is called
  49------------------------
  50
  51The implementation `cmd_foo()` takes three parameters, `argc`, `argv,
  52and `prefix`.  The first two are similar to what `main()` of a
  53standalone command would be called with.
  54
  55When `RUN_SETUP` is specified in the `commands[]` table, and when you
  56were started from a subdirectory of the work tree, `cmd_foo()` is called
  57after chdir(2) to the top of the work tree, and `prefix` gets the path
  58to the subdirectory the command started from.  This allows you to
  59convert a user-supplied pathname (typically relative to that directory)
  60to a pathname relative to the top of the work tree.
  61
  62The return value from `cmd_foo()` becomes the exit status of the
  63command.