Re: [PATCH/RFC 0/7] Column output

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 9, 2011, 05:42 UTC
Message-ID: <20110209054210.GA2019@elie>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTi=WKnj8M2Uh+ACSay1STgOhWAjQbmspYSja3y0+@mail.gmail.com>

Some general reflections.

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:

> 2011/2/9 Jeff King <peff@peff.net>:

>> I don't really care for column output myself,

Me neither. I tricked myself into reading with a vague hope that it might lead to a porcelain-level "git ls" command.

[...]

>> But why not use the BSD column program?
>
> Solaris did not have one last time I checked. Windows obviously does
> not either, but I don't use msysgit so it does not count.

A good reason to port the "column" program, no? I admit I find this a compelling excuse not to bother with getting --column options and core.column configuration right.

All that said.

Patches 1, 2, and 5 replace git help's existing columnation code with something more reusable and functional. After those patches,

	git --paginate help -a

no longer forces 80-column output. Another application of term_columns could be to teach "git log" and "git log --graph" to wrap to terminal width some day.

So if I ran the world, I would put those three patches before --column et al in a possible reroll. :)

Thanks for some clear and pleasant reading. Jonathan