Git-secret: (question) `killperson`? really?

[alumarcu]

Hi,
Just started using git-secret today for one of our team's projects, we're coming from git-crypt, and everything seems much better. Thanks for building this!
The naming choice of the command killperson for removal of the key however - did make us raise a few eyebrows, and we're generally all about having fun naming things too. Could you explain this naming decision a bit?

IMHO there are two issues with the current choice: 1) it's somewhat confusing and 2) it feels rather cringey and unnecessarily violent. Would you consider less confusing, and maybe less aggressive naming choices such as remove-key, deny, revoke, block, etc.? Thank you!

[sobolevn]

Thanks a lot for this question, naming is always really hard.

As Mark Twain once said: "two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead". This is a reference to the classics.

To solve this for you team:

1. You can create a bash alias with whatever name that you think is best.
2. You can create a plugin that will serve as a proxy
3. You can fork this repo, it is licensed as MIT

I am afraid, that renaming commands at this point is not an option. This is related to the really complex packaging and distribution process. A lot of operating system already have this project. And too many users rely on it the way it is. And shipping a breaking change in this manner will be a really bad thing.

You can open a new name suggestion to the new version (we are rewriting this package in Rust): https://github.com/sobolevn/git-secret-rust It will be considered!

Best regards,
Nikita

[sobolevn]

Also /bin/kill is a nice analogy.

[joshrabinowitz]

I agree with the underlying complaint in this issue, but I also agree that killperson can't be renamed, for all the reasons above.

My biggest issue with killperson is that tell and killperson aren't clear opposites -- hide/reveal, add/remove are more obvious complements.

One way forward would be to add a synonym for killperson that is a clearer antonym of tell. I liked the suggestionrevoke best. This would mean git secret revoke [email protected] would be the same as using git secret killperson [email protected].

However, Implementation of this would require adding an exe like git-secret-revoke, along with doc changes, man pages, packaging changes, etc. All doable, but maybe too much code changes for just adding a command synonym.

So I _mildly_ feel that adding 'synonym' support carries just a little bit too much code overhead. But I could possibly be talked out of this position. If someone submitted a PR that made all the changes to add support for revoke in addition to killperson we could talk about it more concretely.