Re: [PATCH] submodule: use abbreviated sha1 in 'status' output

From: Jens Lehmann <jens.lehmann@web.de>
Date: Sep 29, 2012, 15:05 UTC
Message-ID: <50670E39.8080101@web.de>
In-Reply-To: <CALkWK0kzZvPv9jFBF=ibMzcNt-jxq4RFjy7pL173+Y4_S0jhWA@mail.gmail.com>

Am 29.09.2012 16:45, schrieb Ramkumar Ramachandra:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Jens Lehmann wrote:
>> I'm not against the change per se, but do we really want to risk breaking
>> scripts which parse the output of "git submodule status" without even
>> providing a commit message explaining why we did that?
> 
> Oh, I didn't realize that there might be such scripts.  What
> justification do I give in the commit message apart from
> prettification?

Is a prettification justification enough to break backwards compatibility and to risk breaking scripts and user expectations? I think we must have a really good reasons to do that, and just making stuff prettier doesn't count for me unless we have a strong user demand for that.

I suspect you got the idea for this patch from Marc's recent comment:

Am 24.09.2012 17:07, schrieb Marc Branchaud:

> (Honestly, submodule's status sub-command has always felt more like plumbing
> to me than something a user would work with directly.  Maybe it's just the
> full-length SHA's that put me off...)

That is just a single user so far indicating your patch /could/ be an improvement. I think we need quite some more votes on that before we should do a change like this.