Re: [PATCH] Make git-archimport log entries more consistent

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Aug 30, 2007, 07:47 UTC
Message-ID: <86myw9jwga.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>
In-Reply-To: <7vir6xacha.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> I do not think anybody would doubt that the updated one is nicer
> to the eye.  That's why I said it would have been nicer if the
> message was formatted like that from the beginning.  But I do
> not think you can claim it is _more_ consistent.  It just
> formats under a rule different from the original.  The issue is
> if the "nicer-to-the-eye" outweighs potential breakage the
> reformatting can cause to existing parsers, if any.
>
> That's why I wanted to know if people _rely_ on the current
> behaviour, because I was hoping that everybody would answer "yes
> nicer-to-the-eye is more important and there is no drawback".

There are basically two ways to go forward:

a) keep the ugly behavior for all eternity b) change it and have people adapt dependent tools

If it is point b), there is not really a migration strategy worth noting. One can formally announce one's intent of changing it for a while before actually doing it, but given that the previous format was not declared canonical at any point of time, the question is whether anyone will indeed notice before things break.

-- 
David Kastrup