Re: [PATCH] Fix git rev-list --reverse --max-count=N

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 27, 2010, 22:28 UTC
Message-ID: <7vsk9rnpxo.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <201001272309.26054.j6t@kdbg.org>

Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org> writes:

Show 25 quoted lines

> On Mittwoch, 27. Januar 2010, Michael Spang wrote:
>> Using --max-count with --reverse currently outputs the last N commits
>> in the final output rather than the first N commits. We want to
>> truncate the reversed list after the first few commits, rather than
>> truncating the initial list and reversing that.
>
> So when you have this history (A is oldest, D is newest):
>
>    A--B--C--D
>
> and you say
>
>    git log --max-count=2 --reverse D
>
> then you want
>
>    A
>    B
>
> but I want
>
>    C
>    D
>
> Why is your interpretation correct, an mine wrong?

The interaction between --max-count and --reverse was designed a long time ago to support "I want to review the recent N commits in order to make sure that they are natural and logical progression". So an unconditional change of semantics to break that expectation this late in the game will never be acceptable, and giving title to such a patch with a word "Fix" won't fly well (it simply _breaks_ behaviour users have long learned to expect).

It is a different matter to add an explicit command line option (and no configuration to change it to default) to apply reversal before count limiting.