Re: Why does make run git?

[Radon Rosborough]

> We could make it a documented Emacs facility,
> which could be used by any repository, and all front-ends ought
> to call it.

I don't object, but this sounds a little bit like overkill to me. This
would be a significant amount of added complexity (e.g. notifying all
known authors of version-control packages [maybe not that many?] and
hoping they incorporate supporting changes; dealing with safety [is
safe-local-variable-values enough?]; working out the appropriate scope
[is this just for Git? can you also run arbitrary shell commands?];
designing an interface that will cover all common use cases; making
sure that this doesn't impact performance; deciding whether to
override existing configuration and hooks; etc.), and it still doesn't
really fix the problem since plenty of people will just use Git
directly.

I'd vote for leaving the situation as-is, since there's no general way
to prevent people from using Git without first configuring it. The
"right" solution is to not rely on the local Git configuration for
anything mission-critical.

OTOH, since this is a relatively common problem, maybe somebody has
already invented a general-purpose solution. In that case perhaps
Emacs should support that standard. I don't think Emacs should create
its own standard in this case.