Re: [PATCH 1/2] git-gui: warn if the commit message contains lines longer than the set limit

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email>
Date: Sep 6, 2019, 20:07 UTC
Message-ID: <ed572a47-b3d1-028f-0576-aac6c922671e@iee.email>
In-Reply-To: <CAGr--=JpsgESv8W90-iT11VCAD3xQYipN3+Tt7cNyeZrsvhP_Q@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Birger,

On 06/09/2019 15:08, Birger Skogeng Pedersen wrote:

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> Hi Bert,
>
>
> We should probably distinguish between what is wrapped in git-gui
> (i.e. purely visual), and what is actually wrapped in the commit
> message.
> I believe the former is referred to as "soft wrap", while the latter
> is "hard wrap".
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 7:46 PM Bert Wesarg <bert.wesarg@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Please exclude the first line, i.e., the subject. This should not be
>> wrapped at all.
> I think all lines should be soft wrapped. Scrolling sideways is just
> not something I'd want to do in the gui.
>
> How about we soft wrap all lines (in gui). But when the commit is
> created, the actual hard wrap (newline characters) happens only on
> lines other than the first one?

Not sure if I parsed this correctly, but I'd want a WYSIWYG approach that if we wrap on the display it will be wrapped (newline char) in the commit. It sounded as if you were proposing a soft wrap visually, but not doing the same for the commit.

Personally, I've had both feelings with the gui. I like that the 'hard' visual char limit is there that encourages me to wrap my messages. But at the same time if I'm typing on a flow then it's annoying that there wasn't any auto wrap.

The other problem is if one is amending a commit and I need to add a few word mid paragraph, the manual re-flowing and manual wrapping can be annoying.

I suspect there is a moderately happy medium between the two, perhaps with an autowrap key (per paragraph) being available.

I also had it in my head that some parts of Git do allow more than a single line headers, or at least can cope with a run-on second line before the blank line that flags the start of the message proper. (I may be wrong...)

Show 7 quoted lines

> But then again, the user might get frustrated when the resulting
> commit message looks different than what it appeared in git-gui.
>
> Honestly I'd prefer just wrap the first line as well. If the user gets
> frustrated that the first line gets wrapped there are two options:
> - Refrain from writing such a long line
> - Disable word wrapping (it should be configurable, like you said)

Configurable wrapping point - yes, would be nice (a feeling of control, that I'd probably never change ;-).

Show 6 quoted lines

>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>
> Birger

Philip