Re: [PATCH] git-remote: list branches in vertical lists

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Oct 21, 2008, 16:49 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0810211847410.22125@pacific.mpi-cbg.de.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <48FDEA82.5050903@viscovery.net>

Hi,

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Johannes Sixt wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Previously, branches were listed on a single line in each section. But 
> if there are many branches, then horizontal, line-wrapped lists are very 
> inconvenient to scan for a human. This makes the lists vertical, i.e one 
> branch per line is printed.
> 
> This does mean that users' scripts must be updated because the output 
> format changed, but the result is friendlier to the eye *and* easier to 
> parse.

My initial reaction to that was: add an option, and keep the old behavior then.

But on second thought: No script has any business scanning the output of git-remote. That command is a pure convenience wrapper, and scripts trying to list remote branches should use git show-ref instead.

So I'd say: replace the last comment with

	Since "git remote" is porcelain, we can easily make this 
	backwards-incompatible change.

Ciao, Dscho