Re: [PATCH] Add an option to git-ls-tree to display also the size of object

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: May 15, 2007, 18:58 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy7jpj4lr.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <11792246701367-git-send-email-jnareb@gmail.com>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

> Add -l/--long/--size option to git-ls-tree command, which displays
> object size of an entry after object id (left-justified with minimum
> width of 7 characters).

Not a NAK at all (but not an ACK either yet), but just asking questions on some design considerations.

* Do these options do different things?  If not, why have more
  than one (or two, --long and its shorthand -l)?

* Why pad to 7 places?  Do we have a similar padding elsewhere?
  Will this ever used by non-scripts?  How does this padding
  affect parsers other than Perl that read this information?

* Does it make sense to show size information when giving a tree
  entry?  I realize not having it in the output would make the
  job of the script reading the output a bit harder, but if this
  output is meant also for human consumption I think it would
  not be so interesting and raise a confusion factor.

  Also I suspect that having to show the size of a tree object,
  expressed in terms of the canonical representation, might
  force packv4 aware ls-tree to convert its traversal efficient
  representation to the canonical one only to get its size.