Re: [PATCH] shortlog: take the first populated line of the description

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Mar 5, 2008, 21:47 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0803051638150.2947@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <7vy78wlv46.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 22 quoted lines

> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> > ...
> >> 	...  I cannot think of any good reason not to take the first
> >> 	populated line for a shortlog.	The alternative less agressive
> >> 	compromise might be to skip only completly empty lines at the
> >> 	start, but I am not sure that adds any value.
> >> 
> >> 	I seem to get a lot of these in converted SVN commits.
> >> 
> >> 	Comments?
> >
> > Maybe it is the SVN conversion that needs fixing?
> 
> I thought about saying the same, but I am of two minds.
> 
> It is likely that you would want to clean-up when importing,
> especially when you are planning to abandon the other system and
> switch to git.  But you may want to have an import that is as
> close to the original as possible, excess blank lines in the log
> messages and all.

I don't think excess blank lines at the _beginning_ of the commit log has any value worth preserving though.

> I think Andy's fix to make the output side take away
> unnecessary blank lines is unconditionally good.

It is not "bad" in itself. However that feels like papering over another problem which IMHO has greater merits to be fixed. We have given special semantics to the first line of a commit log in many other places now, so unless all those places are also made aware of substandard commit logs too, I think it would be more productive to make sure those logs are semi sensible upon entering Git in the first place instead.

Nicolas