How to `git blame` individual characters?
- From
Jan Keromnes <janx@linux.com>
- Date
- Mar 27, 2018, 00:18 UTC
- Message-ID
- <CAA6PgK7L04VoHT7A8M_mwq5kA+9BiQxrd6iPjPHOpa4=Z3futw@mail.gmail.com>
Dear Git developers,
I'd like to understand what would be required to run `git blame` on individual characters instead of full lines. Could you please point me in the right direction?
Someone asked a similar question about "Word-by-word blame/annotate" on StackOverflow a few years ago, and one of the replies said:
> Git tracks changes snapshot by snapshot. The line-based format is calculated on-the-fly, and it would also be possible to have a word-based format.
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/q/17758008/3461173
This leaves me hopeful that a character-based format can somehow be achieved. Here is a fake example to illustrate what I'm looking for:
$ cat myscript.js
for (int foo = 0; foo <= 11; foo++) { console.log(foo); }
$ git blame --character-based --pseudo-json myscript.js
[
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": "for (int " },
{ "commit": "bcd1234a", "summary": "Rename iterator",
"characters": "foo" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": " = 0; " },
{ "commit": "bcd1234a", "summary": "Rename iterator",
"characters": "foo" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": " <= " },
{ "commit": "cd1234ab", "summary": "Go up to 11",
"characters": "11" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": "; " },
{ "commit": "bcd1234a", "summary": "Rename iterator",
"characters": "foo" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": "++) { console.log(" },
{ "commit": "bcd1234a", "summary": "Rename iterator",
"characters": "foo" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": ")" },
{ "commit": "d1234abc", "summary": "Add missing
semicolon", "characters": ";" },
{ "commit": "abcd1234", "summary": "Implement loop",
"characters": " }" }
]What would be the most direct way to achieve such a character-based blame/annotate? Should I write some sort of Git extension, or hack into Git's source code?
E.g. I looked for an option in `git-blame` or `git-annotate` to change the "next line boundary" from "carret return" (line-based blame) to "any whitespace" (word-based blame) or "character-by-character" (character-based blame), but I didn't find it. Could this be implemented in `blame.c`? If so, which methods would need tweaking?
Many thanks! Jan