Re: [PATCH 0/2] Random patches from my tree

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Oct 27, 2008, 20:37 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0810271328310.3386@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0810271256470.3386@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> 
> So the second one allows things like
> 
> 	git log --pretty=oneline --source --all

A better example may have --abbrev-commit, at which point my current git tree looks like this for me:

	52be8b3... refs/heads/master Add a 'source' decorator for commits
	affba33... refs/heads/master Add file delete/create info when we overflow rename
	6806f78... refs/remotes/origin/pu Merge branch 'ar/mksnpath' into pu
	058412d... refs/remotes/origin/pu Fix potentially dangerous uses of mkpath and g
	356af64... refs/remotes/origin/pu Merge branch 'ar/maint-mksnpath' into HEAD
	9fa03c1... refs/remotes/origin/pu Fix potentially dangerous uses of mkpath and g
	94cc355... refs/remotes/origin/pu Fix mkpath abuse in dwim_ref and dwim_log of s
	108bebe... refs/remotes/origin/pu Add mksnpath which allows you to specify the o
	6af1fc2... refs/remotes/origin/man Autogenerated manpages for v1.6.0.3-523-g304d
	61b1229... refs/remotes/origin/html Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.6.0.3-523-g30
	f3ce133... refs/remotes/origin/pu Merge branch 'jc/send-pack-tell-me-more' into 
	2b37e3a... refs/remotes/origin/pu Merge branch 'jk/renamelimit' into pu
	..

ie you can see the the branch that the commits are on.

An example of the ambiguous nature would be

	304d058... refs/remotes/origin/HEAD Merge branch 'maint'

ie because the HEAD and 'master' branches of refs/remotes/origin are the same, it's ambiguous which one to take, and git will have picked one at random. And obviously when you hit a point where two branches meet again, it really will depend on which branch we happened to be parsing at the time (which generally is "which branch had a commit date that was further back in history").

Another known deficiency: "gitk --source" doesn't work (neither does "gitk --decorate" for that matter). gitk gets very upset indeed if you try, and sucks up CPU cycles in some infinite loop.

		Linus