Re: [PATCH] format_commit_message: honor `color=auto` for `%C(auto)`

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 31, 2016, 22:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20160531221805.GB3824@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8BF6woZy8WUsJzVFqaMDCOMEYK-3xFNNeOQ6B+OMyqJLw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 07:23:32PM +0700, Duy Nguyen wrote:

> I think the (old) "auto" here means "automatically select the
> color" and what you do would be equivalent to %(auto,auto) where the
> first (and new) "auto" is about on/off switch, and the second is about
> selecting the actual color.

Ah, right. The current behavior does make more sense if you realize we are talking about two different meaning of "auto" here.

Show 11 quoted lines

> > I think it's worth mentioning this explicitly in the commit message. We
> > could also add "%C(on)", I guess, but it's unclear to me whether anybody
> > would want it (they would probably just use "--color" in that case,
> > unless they really want unconditional coloring for just _some_
> > elements).
> 
> If I could redo, I would go with %C(default) instead of %C(auto) then
> we could have %C(auto,default). Perhaps we can make %C(auto) an
> equivalent of %C(auto,default) now (i.e. exactly what this patch does)
> and at some point in future add %C(default) which is what %C(auto) is
> now if people really need to force it on?

That makes a lot of sense to me. It does change the current meaning of "%C(auto)", but the current state is sufficiently confusing that I think we can call the existing behavior a bug. I'm ambivalent on either implementing %C(default) now, or waiting until somebody actually wants it.

Thanks for clarifying the history.

-Peff