Re: [PATCH 4/4] range-diff: indent special lines as context

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Aug 14, 2018, 19:05 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZhLsUZL+bfoovV+U6W-zX6npERRG86fS8+1GsTQmKoHA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1808141713510.71@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 11:54 AM Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 28 quoted lines

>
> Hi Stefan,
>
> On Mon, 13 Aug 2018, Stefan Beller wrote:
>
> > > > The later lines that indicate a change to the Makefile will be treated as
> > > > context both in the outer and inner diff, such that those lines stay
> > > > regular color.
> > >
> > > While I am a fan of having those lines colored correctly, I have to admit
> > > that I am not exactly enthusiastic about that extra indentation...
> > >
> > > Otherwise, this looks good to me.
> >
> > Can you explain what makes you less enthused about the indentation?
> >
> > Advantage:
> > * allows easy coloring (easy implementation)
> > Disadvantage:
> > * formats change,
>
> This is it. It breaks my visual flow.
>
> > but the range diff is still in its early design phase, so we're not
> > breaking things, yet?
>
> Indeed. We're not breaking things. If you feel strongly about it, we can
> have that indentation, I *can* get used to it.

I only feel strongly about it now as that is the *easiest* way to make the colors look like I want them to look. And I really value colors in the range-diff. Earlier you said that color-less range-diff is nearly useless for you and I thought it was hyperbole, but by now I realize how much truth you spoke. So getting the colors fixed to not markup files (+++/ --- lines of the inner diff) is a high priority for me. So high that I would compromise on the indentation/flow of these corner case areas.

Show 11 quoted lines

> >   (Do we ever plan on sending range-diff patches that can be applied to
> >   rewrite history? I am very uncertain on such a feature request.  It
> >   sounds cool, though)
>
> I remember that I heard you discussing this internally. I am not too big a
> fan of this idea, I have to admit. The range diff seems more designed to
> explain how a patch series evolved, rather than providing machine-readable
> data that allows to recreate said evolution. For example, the committer
> information as well as the date are missing, which would preclude a
> faithful reconstruction.
>

Ah! good point. Though we could just work around that and use the email date for the new author dates. ;-)

> And that is not all: if you wanted to "apply" a range diff, you would need
> to know more about the base(s) of the two commit ranges. You would need to
> know that they are at least very similar to the base onto which you want
> to apply this.

You would say so in the cover letter "This is a resend of sb/range-diff-colors" and by the knowledge of that tip only and the range-diff you would know how the new series would look like, even if it was rebased.

> And quite seriously, this would be the wrong way to go in my mind. We have
> a very efficient data format to transport all of that information: the Git
> bundle.

The bundle format is very efficient for machine transport, but I thought the whole point of the mailing list was easy human readable parts, i.e. you can point out things in a diff, which you could also do in a range-diff to some extend. We would loose some of the "fresh eyes" as you'd only see the changed part of the series. :-/ So yeah even for the workflow this seems a net-negative. I just thought it would be cool.

Show 5 quoted lines

> Let's not overload the range diff format with multiple, partially
> contradicting purposes. Think "separation of concerns". It's the same
> issue, really, as trying to send highly structured data such as bug
> reports or code contributions via a medium meant to send unstructured
> plain or formatted text back and forth between human beings.

ok.

Thanks, Stefan