From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 22:09:02 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 6/6] status: add missing blank line after list of "other" files
Message-ID: <20130906220902.GB13319@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq4n9xyepx.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 11:42:02AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > It is not like we want to add a blank line at the end of each
> > element; it is rather that we want to have a blank line between each
> > element, so that they can have a bit of breathing room between them.
> >
> > The output looks especially bad when there is nothing after the
> > 'untracked' list.
> 
> We might want to revisit this later, but I take the above back at
> least for now.

I agree with most of what you say here, and I started to look at a
simple patch to give separator semantics. But there's an interesting
case.

Given this:

> If we have absolutely nothing, we get this:
> 
> 	$ git status
> 	On branch master
>         nothing to commit
> 	$

I think the lack of extra line delimiter looks fine.

But here:

> And if we have something, we get this:
> 
> 	$ git status
> 	On branch master
> 	Changes to be committed:
> 	  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
> 
> 	        new file:   foo

I think it looks kind of bad, because the branch specifier is is
smooshed into the "to be committed" header.

So the logic is not just "separate with a newline". It's more like
"separate big chunks with a newline, but if we only have small chunks,
it's OK to stick them together".

-Peff