Re: [PATCH] gitk: new option to hide prefetch refs

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 24, 2021, 18:46 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4kbeptnv.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <0004f758-759b-f523-fa3d-dd7759d6eec7@gmail.com>

Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> writes:

Show 22 quoted lines

> On 8/24/2021 8:18 AM, Tal Kelrich via GitGitGadget wrote:
>> From: Tal Kelrich <hasturkun@gmail.com>
>> 
>> The maintenance 'prefetch' task creates refs that mirror remote refs,
>> and in repositories with many branches this can clutter the commit list.
>> 
>> Add a new option to ignore any prefetch refs, enabled by default.
>
> This seems like a sensible feature to add. Thank you for contributing!
>  
>>     It might have been better to allow gitk to read log.excludeDecoration
>>     (or a gitk specific configured pattern) and use that to ignore refs, but
>>     this was simpler for me to implement without knowing Tcl.
>
> I agree, but I also don't know Tcl so can't comment to how hard that
> might be. I'm not sure how gitk operates and why it does not automatically
> benefit from log.excludeDecoration. Is it computing its own decoration? Is
> it using a different Git command that isn't integrated with
> log.excludeDecoration, but should be?
>
> I also cannot review that this patch works as advertised. I just wanted to
> chime in with support for the idea.

I would usually say that defaulting this to 'on' would be a biased choice [*1*], but in this case I tend to think it is a good idea to hide these by default, as 'prefetch' came way after people started using Git, and users did not ask for 'prefetch' refs. The prefetching may help users but the refs used to anchor the prefetched objects are implementation detail that the users would rather not to see.

I wonder if we should also hide refs/stash for the same reason, but that is outside the scope of this change.

In any case, please make it a patch relative to Paul's tree and send it in his direction.

Thanks.

[Footnote]

*1* Whenever the inventor of a feature says "I expect users would want this!", it needs to be taken with a moderate amount of salt, as the inventor is self selected specimen who wanted it (after all, the feature motivated the inventor enough to write the patch).