From: Junio C Hamano Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:58:05 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Documentation: rev-list-options: clarify history simplification with paths Message-ID: <7v63q8353m.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Linus Torvalds writes: > On Sun, 10 Aug 2008, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> >> Personally I do not think --full-history without --parents is of much >> usefulness (I'd let Linus or somebody else defend this usage, or make it >> imply revs.rewrite_parents otherwise). If you remove that case from your >> set of experiments in the equation, do the rest of the results make sense? > > Oh, it's _very_ useful. > > The most common case is "git whatchanged". It's useful to find a commit > that did some change _without_ any graphical front-end. > > And then the merges and parenthood are totally pointless - no human can > try to tie things together in their head _anyway_, so why show them? You > just want to find the change. Oh, I was not talking about revs.print_parents part, but about revs.rewrite_parents part. What got Thomas puzzled about was exactly how the set of commits _shown_ are different with and without --parents, which sets both of these internal flags. Your "pointless" argument applies to "print_parents" part, but "rewrite_parents" affects the resulting set.