Re: [PATCH/RFC] gitweb: Don't pass --full-history to git-log(1)

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 5, 2015, 21:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CACBZZX5GvCqx3LkWBDb4kDFpyaEwK-Fnhtof6nhKsctmx22m1g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr3nh4qx5.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 6:54 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> When you look at the history for a file via "git log" we don't show
>> --full-history by default, but the Gitweb UI does so, which can be very
>> confusing for all the reasons discussed in "History Simplification" in
>> git-log(1) and in
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/89400/focus=90659
>>
>> We've been doing history via --full-history since pretty much forever,
>> but I think this is much more usable, and on a typical project with lots
>> of branches being merged it makes for a much less confusing view. We do
>> this for git log by default, why wouldn't Gitweb follow suit?
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/89400/focus=90758
>
> seems to agree with you in principle that this would be what gitweb
> should do if it were written today.

I'm reminded of the make(1) story about not supporting spaces instead of tabs because the guy already had a few dozen users.

We could have changed this in 2008, when Git already had much fewer users, and I think we can still change it. It makes more sense as a default, especially on busy repos with lots of merges. At work where lots of merges are in flight literally 1/10 commits for any given file is relevant.

Who'd be linking to gitweb's log output expecting its semantics to never change, and is use case more important than having a saner view for the vast majority of users who are just browsing around?

But if there's strong objections to it a coworker who encountered this made a patch to it to add an extra "full history" an addition to the "history" view (which would change, but not the permalinks), in case there were objections to just changing it.