Re: [PATCH] Documentation/log: fix description of format.pretty

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 12, 2012, 17:42 UTC
Message-ID: <7vwqxqk99g.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20121112153855.GA3546@elie.Belkin>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
>
>> Oops, I read about `--pretty` in pretty-formats.txt and didn't realize
>> that `--format` existed.  However, your patch is still wrong because
>> there seems to be a subtle (and confusing) difference between
>> `--pretty` and `--format`.  In the latter, you can't omit the format,
>> and expect it to be picked up from format.pretty:
>>
>>   $ git log --format
>>   fatal: unrecognized argument: --format

We probably should say "--format needs an argument" here.

Show 11 quoted lines

> ... It is based on the
> following text from Documentation/config.txt:
>
> 	format.pretty::
> 		The default pretty format for log/show/whatchanged command,
> 		See linkgit:git-log[1], linkgit:git-show[1],
> 		linkgit:git-whatchanged[1].
>
> I do imagine it can be made clearer.  s/--format/--pretty/ does not go
> far enough --- it only replaces one confusing explanation with
> another.

The --format and --pretty are more or less the same thing since 3a4c1a5 (Add --format that is a synonym to --pretty, 2009-02-24). The --format option was added as a synonym because majority of new users who have never heard of --pretty found it more natural; in that sense, Ram's patch goes backwards.

The entry in config.txt came from 94c22a5 (log/show/whatchanged: introduce format.pretty configuration, 2008-03-02) that predates the synonym, and originally it was to allow

    [format] pretty = fuller

to make "git log" by default use "git log --pretty=fuller" in the configuration; back then there wasn't a support for custom formats like

    [format] pretty = "%h %s"

until 3640754 (Give short-hands to --pretty=tformat:%formatstring, 2009-02-24) introduced it.

"The default pretty format" in the description was written to refer to the original "raw/medium/short/email/full/fuller" set, but these days, we accept anything that you can write after "--pretty=" (or its synonym "--format=") on the command line.

This is one of the reasons why I do not want to see abbreviated descriptions for configuration variables duplicated in the manual pages of individual commands, as the practice tends to lead to this kind of confusion.