git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: How pretty is pretty? git cat-file -p inconsistency

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Oct 7, 2011, 18:04 UTC
Message-ID
<7v62k0wudg.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<4E8EBC00.90909@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:
> That is, "cat file -p" pretty prints dates for tag objects but not for
> commit objects. In fact, "-p" on commit objects does not prettify at all
> compared to the raw content. Is that intentional?

"cat-file -p" is an ill-conceived half-ass afterthought, and I do not think anybody sane considers it as part of the "plumbing" ultra stable interface for machine consumption. See a0f15fa (Pretty-print tagger dates., 2006-03-01).

> I'd suggest
> prettifying dates with "-p" for commit objects also.

Please make it so. It is your choice to do a patch to update this single thing first, or to discuss the output with "-p" for all the other object types at the same time to get the list concensus before proceeding.

Thanks.
Previous: Michael J GruberNext: Michael J Gruber
Message 2 of 6 in “How pretty is pretty? git cat-file -p inconsistency”
  1. Michael J GruberOct 7, 2011
  2. Junio C HamanoOct 7, 2011
  3. Michael J GruberOct 7, 2011
  4. Jakub NarebskiOct 7, 2011
  5. Michael J GruberOct 8, 2011
  6. Jakub NarebskiOct 8, 2011

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.