Subject: bug#62958: [PATCH] Set PAGER=cat in comint.el

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 May 2023 21:58:06 +0300

> From: Spencer Baugh <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked],  [email-masked]
> Date: Tue, 09 May 2023 13:13:56 -0400
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> >> From: Spencer Baugh <[email-masked]>
> >> Date: Tue, 9 May 2023 13:01:07 -0400
> >> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> >> 
> >>  I'm asking why this is not already obvious from the fact that this is
> >>  a defcustom, by default off.  All your addition says is "don't disable
> >>  paging in all cases, sometimes it can be useful".  But we already said
> >>  that, in effect, by making the paging enabled by default.  So there's
> >>  no reason to have that text, as it isn't instrumental, and doesn't add
> >>  anything.
> >> 
> >> How does "this is a defcustom, by default off" communicate "you should use vc-print-log if you turn this
> >> on"?
> >
> > Why are we suddenly talking about vc-print-log when discussing a much
> > more general feature?
> 
> Because disabling pagination effectively breaks the shell command "git
> log" and vc-print-log is one alternative to running "git log", and I
> don't know how else the user would realize that.  (In my experience with
> talking to users about this, they usually don't)

A doc string of a general option is not the proper place for talking
about some very specific case when that option is used.  If the main
problem is vc-print-log, we should find another way of dealing with
it.