Re: [PATCH] Reformat "your branch has diverged..." lines to reduce line length.

From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2008, 20:27 UTC
Message-ID: <32541b130807161327k17f3a58ay5ab2da75963a2d50@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v4p6pr4ob.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On 7/16/08, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com> writes:
>  >       if (!num_theirs)
>  > -             strbuf_addf(sb, "Your branch is ahead of the tracked%s branch '%s' "
>  > +             strbuf_addf(sb, "Your branch is ahead of the tracked%s branch '%s'\n"
>  >                           "by %d commit%s.\n",
>
>  I wonder if a simple "s/of the tracked%s branch //" is better for this
>  kind of thing.  If the message says 'origin/master', you know it is a
>  tracked remote branch anyway, don't you?

Personally, I would be fine with shorter messages; this doesn't seem the best time to report the name of the tracked branch anyhow. I use 80x24 terminals too most of the time.

However, I didn't write the original patch either, and I recall that this feature was so popular that it actually resulted in a list thread complimenting it, so I was hesitant to change it too much :)

Show 9 quoted lines

>         Your branch is ahead of 'origin/add-chickens2' by 21 commits.
>
>         Your branch is behind 'origin/add-chickens2' by 1 commit.
>
>         Your branch and 'origin/add-chickens2' have diverged, and have
>         21 and 1 different commit(s) each, respectively.
>
>  I moved "respectively" so that the variable parts will come close to the
>  beginning of physical line.

Well, the fact that the number of commits is "variable" isn't so important, unless you start diverging by 1e9 commits or something :) It might be nice to minimize the amount of static text on the line containing the branch name, though. Your rephrasing would allow us to go as far as:

    Your branch and 'origin/add-chickens2'
    have diverged, and have 21 and 1 different commit(s) each, respectively.

Which looks a little imbalanced, but works with long branch names.

Alternatively, your rephrasing above made me think of the idea of just printing *both* of the first two messages in the "diverging" case. Depending how you think of it, that would be either more clear or less clear. It's actually easier to parse the two short sentences than the long one.

Please let me know if you want me to resubmit the patch with your suggestions or whether you'll handle it. I'm still a little vague on the exact patch approval process.

Have fun,

Avery