From: Junio C Hamano Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:27:15 GMT Subject: Re: [IGNORETHIS/PATCH] Choosing the sha1 prefix of your commits Message-ID: <7vzkgw9tjw.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Kyle Moffett writes: > Heh, there's one other practical downside I can think of... > > If you create a bunch of commits with the same 8-hex-character prefix > then suddenly the "git describe" logic for using the first 7 commit ID > characters gets a whole lot less useful. In the sense that you need to cut and paste a lot more characters, you are correct that it would make it less useful, but if you are talking about uniqueness, you are mistaken. The rule is not "using the first 7 hexdigits", but is "using as many hexdigits to make assure uniqueness, but use at least 7".