Re: [PATCH 0/4] Selectively show only blamed limes

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 28, 2020, 16:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20200528164533.GA1223132@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <0da84168-3d81-fb14-32ad-010ef2436958@iee.email>

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 11:24:54AM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> > I'm not convinced this is a useful thing to do in general. Lines don't
> > always stand on their own, and you'd lack context for deciphering them.
> > So a real example from "git blame -b --since=1.year.ago Makefile", for
> > example (pardon the long lines):
> 
> My contention is that there is a lot of effort needed _beforehand_ to
> reach that point. We've already had to page down 2700 line to get there,
> and then had to carefully select the differing before and after context
> lines.

I think:

  git blame -b --since=1.year.ago ... | less "+/^[^ ]"

works pretty well to get you to the right spot, with context (and then "/<enter>" within less takes you to the next line).

But that's also pretty magical.

> The use of the --blame-only (especially with broad date range --since)
> is to quickly narrow focus with the rather large file to the few areas
> of concern (probably related why the -b was introduced initially?)

Perhaps. I think when you get an out-of-context chunk, though, it's tricky to take the next step.

I'm still skeptical this will turn out to be all that useful in practice. But it really isn't much code to carry, so I don't have any real objection.

-Peff