Re: [RFC] Colorization of log --graph

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 18, 2009, 11:44 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0903181228420.10279@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <20090318100512.GA7932@linux.vnet>

Hi,

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, Allan Caffee wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I know that _some_ people arn't particularly fond of colors, but I was 
> wondering how difficult it would be to colorize the edges on the --graph 
> drawn by the log command?  It can be a little tricky trying to follow 
> them with a relatively complex history.  I was thinking something like 
> gitk already does.

That's a good idea!  (And it is mentioned as a TODO in graph.c...)

> Is anybody else interested in seeing this?

Count me in.  Are you interested in implementing this?

If so:

- you need to #include "color.h" in graph.c

- you need to insert a color identifier into struct column (there is an 
  XXX comment at the correct location)

- you need to find a way to determine colors for the branches

- you need to put the handling into the function 
  graph_output_pre_commit_line() in graph.c (and probably 
  graph_output_commit_char(), graph_output_post_merge_line(), 
  graph_output_collapsing_line(), graph_padding_line(), and
  graph_output_padding_line(), too)

- it would make sense IMHO to introduce a new function that takes a 
  pointer to an strbuf, a pointer to a struct column and a char (or maybe 
  a string) that adds the appropriately colorized char (or string) to the 
  strbuf

- use the global variable diff_use_color to determine if the output should 
  be colorized at all

- probably you need to make an array of available colors or some such 
  (which might be good to put into color.[ch])

Ciao, Dscho