Re: Git for Windows v2.23.0-rc0, was Re: [ANNOUNCE] Git v2.23.0-rc0

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 1, 2019, 01:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20190801010022.GA6553@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20190801002125.GA176307@google.com>

On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 05:21:25PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Although as Dscho mentions, it's particularly irritating because it is
> not part of the paginated output.
> 
> I wonder if the ideal might not be to trigger it more selectively, when
> the output actually changed due to a reflog entry.  I mean something
> like
> 
> 	commit 393a9dd0f9762c69f753a8fa0bc89c203c6b4e9e (HEAD, origin/foo, other/pu)
> 	Merge: 18598e40e6 1eba6eb1c2
> 	Author: A U Thor <author@example.com> (see "git help mailmap")
> 	Date:   Tue Jul 30 15:05:41 2019 -0700
> 
> 	    Merge branch 'jt/fetch-cdn-offload' into foo

I actually kind of like that, because it tells you exactly when it is impacting things (not just that the mailmap was used, but that this _particular_ name was mapped, which is going to be the most actionable thing). But I do think the syntax above might end up breaking somebody who's trying to parse it (people aren't supposed to be parsing log output, but...).

Something like:

  Author: A U Thor <author@example.com>
  Original-Author: I M Mailmapped <orig@example.com>

gives even more information while leaving the "Author:" line untouched. But in introducing a new line, it may also be breaking somebody.

I think all of these are riskier than just quietly engaging the mailmap. That's syntactically identical, so no risk of parsing regressions That's almost always going to be what people _actually_ want if there's a mailmap in the repo. The only exception is if they're somehow trying to do analysis on original versus mapped names. At which point they really ought to be using a parseable format like --pretty=raw, or "%an <%ae>".

Show 6 quoted lines

> is *particularly* unactionable in the current state where we're not
> rewriting authors.  I think we should bite the bullet and just flip
> the default to "true", with the config as an escape hatch to allow
> going back to the old behavior.
> 
> Is it too late in the release cycle to do that?  If not, we can do

IMHO no, it is not too late. This is a new feature in this release, and we're at -rc0. The point of the rc period is to find problems in the new code. So certainly I think it is not too late to change our minds about this feature. I could see an argument that instead of changing it now, we should revert for v2.23 and work on it with less urgency during the next cycle. But personally I'd see what a day or two of discussion turns up; if everybody agrees on the path forward and the implementation isn't complicated, it may be easiest to just proceed now.

> -- >8 --
> Subject: log: use mailmap by default in interactive use

This seems OK to me, though I kind of wonder if anybody really wants "auto". Unlike log.decorate, which changes the syntax, there is no real reason to avoid mailmap when somebody else is parsing the output. And I could imagine it is especially confusing if:

  git log --author=whoever

and

  git log | grep whoever | wc -l

do not agree.

-Peff