Re: pseudo initial empty commit and tag for git-log and git-describe?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Sep 20, 2006, 15:12 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0609200807120.4388@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <fcaeb9bf0609200658p3f04df7oe91ddb971787bd70@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Nguyá»n ThÃ¡i Ngá»c Duy wrote:

>
> I'm still uncomfortable with git-log -p unable to show the first
> commit (git-whatchanged too).

Both of those work fine with "--root". That option tells git: "I'm interested in the root patch too".

It might make sense to have "--root" be the default, but the problem is that for projects like the Linux kernel where the first commit is a big import, showing it as a patch simply doesn't make sense.

So it would have to be a per-repository decision, depending on whether the repo considers the first commit to be an import or not. Maybe a git-config option?

> Also git-describe refuses to work without any tag.

Now, that's arguably a real bug. You should be able to describe any commit, and if there's no tag that is reachable from it, the "description" should probably just be the SHA1 of the commit.

(Side issue: we should probably also accept the output of "git describe" as a revision name, since it's a bit silly that you can ask git to "describe" a revision, but then git can't actually use the description itself ;)

			Linus