Discuss the reliability of state variables

[Karl Liang]

Background

I have used tig for a long time and I think tig is a really great tool compared to other similar TUI git wrappers. Due to the limitation of the tig functions, usually I would created some scripts for my customized behavior that depends on those state variables. I think it's fine for me to write these scripts, as it's just like what tmux did that tmux opens lots of basic variables or options for external plugins instead of implementing many fasion features itself. I don't think tmux has a bad design. However, just like what I did to tmux config, when I try to customize my tig profile, sometimes I'm annoyed with the state variables in tig as they are not reliable and make the external script hard to get right results.

Examples

I spend lots of time to think about the workaround to get the proper information where the tig light bar(cursor line?) located. For example, if there is an external command tig path/to/foo triggered and I want to get the path path/to/foo in tig, it would be pretty hard for me as %(directory) may not return the correct result.

Or, if I create an branch foo and I delete it immediately, the %(branch) variable would still be foo if the light bar has already moved to other commits where there are no branches created.

I have a lot of similar experience that some of them could be avoid but some of them not.

Suggestions

I don't expect tig could have many features, but I hope the options and variables of tig could be reliable. If we the users could implement features based on the reliable tig options and variables, then I think it would be really helpful to reduce the issue tickets for sure. ^ ^"