Re: [RFC PATCH] GIT-VERSION-GEN: set --abbrev=9 to match auto-scaling

From: Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com>
Date: Dec 5, 2016, 20:30 UTC
Message-ID: <e74163ee-e7d4-bcbd-e65f-368bc2ee9a2d@ramsayjones.plus.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq7f7e5jsy.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On 05/12/16 18:10, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

> Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com> writes:
> 
>> Heh, that was the first version of the patch. However, I got to thinking
>> about why --abbrev=7 was there in the first place; the only reason I
>> could think of was to defeat local configuration to get a measure of
>> reproducibility.
>>
>> Unfortunately, you can't get the 'auto' behaviour from --abbrev
>> (on the pu branch):
>>
>>     $ ./git describe --abbrev=-1
>>     v2.11.0-286-g109e8
>>     $ ./git describe --abbrev=0
>>     v2.11.0
>>     $ ./git describe
>>     v2.11.0-286-g109e8a99d
>>     $
> 
> What is the reason why the last one is undesirable?  Is it because
> the user may have core.abbrev set to some value in the configuration
> and you want to override it to force "auto"?

As I said, the original version of the patch just removed the --abbrev=7, but then I started to think about why you might have used --abbrev in the first place (first in commit 9b88fcef7 and again in commit bf505158d). Making sure to override the configuration was the only thing I could come up with. So, I was hoping you could remember why! :-P

(I assumed it was to force a measure of uniformity/reproducibility).

ATB, Ramsay Jones