git-blame.el: does not show one-line summary in echo area

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 4, 2011, 01:43 UTC
Message-ID: <20110204014315.GB28525@elie>
In-Reply-To: <87d42s3pv2.fsf@lysator.liu.se>

Hi David et al,

David Kågedal wrote:

> Sergei Organov <osv@javad.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> Now, I've evaluated (require 'format-spec) in my Emacs 22 (yes, 22, not
>> 23), and now git-blame almost works there. The problem I see is that it
>> doesn't output anything in the echo area. It color-codes the buffer, it
>> does show correct pop-up when mouse is over a region, but it doesn't
>> print anything in the echo area when I move cursor through the regions.
>> Any idea how to debug/fix this?
>
> Well, it appears I removed the output to the echo area. I didn't think
> it worked very well, and the new output format mostly replaces it by
> showing the hash.
>
> There are also technical reasons for removing it (it couldn't be
> implemented very cleanly).

I don't use git-blame.el ("git blame", "git gui blame", and "git log -S/-G" take care of my needs already) but it seems to me that this change was a regression. The emacs support before v1.6.6-rc0~120^2 had a simple way to find out the purpose of each line of code, while after that there is no simple way. And it is what the README promises:

 * git-blame.el:

   Emacs implementation of incremental git-blame.  When you turn it on
   while viewing a file, the editor buffer will be updated by setting
   the background of individual lines to a color that reflects which
   commit it comes from.  And when you move around the buffer, a
   one-line summary will be shown in the echo area.

Any advice for people who want to fix that? Is anyone interested in doing so? (It is quite likely I am guessing incorrectly about what is useful, but I would imagine that at least the documentation could use updating.)

Jonathan