Re: [PATCH v2] gitk: Add a "Copy commit summary" command

> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 08:30:24AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> writes:
>>
>>> We have an item in the preferences menu to control the SHA1 length
>>> that is automatically selected when going to a new commit.  It's
>>> stored in the variable $autosellen.  That seems like it would be a
>>> reasonable choice for the SHA1 length to use here.
>>
>> Reusing a configuration that is used to control something similar
>> sounds sensible to me.
>>
>>> The only possible
>>> problem is that it defaults to 40 and so might give an overly long
>>> result for some users.  Maybe you could use $autosellen but limit it
>>> to at most 12 or 16 or something like that.
>>
>> How is the thing that is "automatically selected when going to a new
>> commit" used by the end user?  What is the reason why people may
>> want to configure it?  I understand that this is the string that
>> goes into the selection buffer, so presumably people are using this
>> selection to paste elsewhere?  If so, that sounds like very similar
>> to Beat's use case---perhaps if 40 is too long for Beat's use case
>> as a sensible default, then it is also too long for its original use
>> case?
> 
> It's used for pasting into commit messages and emails, and it's used
> for pasting onto the command line when typing git commands.  For the
> second, the length doesn't matter; the limit was added for the first
> case.
> 
>> Or do you expect it to be common to want to use autosellen set to 40
>> and Beat's abbrev len set to much shorter, e.g. 16?  If so they may
>> deserve two different settings, with different defaults.
> 
> I would think that if $autosellen is 40 it's almost certainly because
> the user hasn't found that control in the preferences window. :)
> 
>> Artificially limiting it to 12 or 16 does not sound all that
>> sensible, though.
> 
> Adding --abbrev=$autosellen if $autosellen is not 40 sounds like it
> would do what we want.