Re: [RFD] Combine diff improvements

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 15, 2013, 05:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7vboalw6lt.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CALWbr2zY3uo==QTd69t1eXNS4-CX1w3T-AaMjOLVmxj-SMJyvg@mail.gmail.com>

Antoine Pelisse <apelisse@gmail.com> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> While if we invert the two parents order we will have:
> - 3
> --1
> --2
> - 4
>  -3
>  -4
>
> While clearly, in both cases, the optimal solution would be close to:
> - 3
> --1
> --2
>  -3
> --4

We should shoot for better readability as the primary goal. When I am viewing "--cc" output, I find it easier to read if the lines for the same parent are consecutive. That is, I find the right one far easier to grok than the left one:

     - 1                - 1
      -2                - 3
     - 3                 -2
      -4                 -4

when trying to see what got changed from the first parent (we had 1 and then 3 and whatever comes after this block; 2 and 4 are noise and it makes it easier to skip them because they are together).

This can probably be done as a post-process phase after you find the coalescing matches to express the result in the smallest number of lines, but I thought it is worth mentioning that not all solutions with the same number of lines are equally good.