Re: [RFC PATCH, WAS: "weird diff output?" 2/2] xdiff: implement empty line chunk heuristic

> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I actually do not think these knobs should exist when the code is
>>>> mature enough to be shipped to the end users.
>>>>
>>>> Use "diff.compactionHeuristics = <uint>" as an opaque set of bits to
>>>> help the developers while they compare notes and reach consensus on
>>>> a single tweak that they can agree on being good enough, and then
>>>> remove that variable before the code hits 'next'.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> I was under the impression that we would want a longer lived
>>> configuration until we had enough data to say whether it was
>>> helpful to make it default. I guess i had thought it would need to
>>> be longer lived since there may be cases where it's not optimal
>>> and being able to turn it off would be good?
>>
>> Once you start worrying about "some cases this may misbehave", a
>> configuration variable is a wrong mechanism to do so anyway.  You
>> would need to tie this to attributes, so the users can say "use this
>> heuristics for my C code, but do not apply it for my AsciiDoc
>> input", etc.
>>
>
> I think this makes perfect sense to apply this as an attribute,
> however.. why isn't the current diff algorithm done this way?
>
> Thanks,
> Jake
>
>> What you have is a pure developer support; aim to come up with "good
>> enough" way, giving developers an easier way to experiment with, and
>> remove it before the feature is shipped to the end user.