Re: Re* Re* [PATCH v4 0/3] advice: add "all" option to disable all hints

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 7, 2024, 00:21 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqikzqwjyb.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <5665eef37193e8a6894f100a554bce4d@manjaro.org>

Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> See, the creation factor is described in the documentation as some fudge
> factor, specified as a percentage.  Without going through the actual
> source code in detail, a question that pops up in my mind is why do we
> need to use 999 or 9999 as the new default value?  Shouldn't 99 or 100
> be good enough instead, if it's a percentage?  I'd assume that the same
> question might be asked by other Git users.

It is very much deliberate to choose a value beyond 100. Setting the value to such a large value was designed to force somebody to ask that question: "what does the value mean?" [*], and in a sense it already has achieved one half of its objective ;-).

We never had an satisfactory update to the range-diff documentation when we discussed this parameter in the past. It was stated that the unit to express the value for creation-factor was called "percent", but it seems that nobody had a good explanation that can be given to a layperson what that percent means (e.g., what is it relative to? what it means to have that value at 100% as opposed to say 50%?). Somebody should come up with an easy-to-understand explanation suitable for users after reading and digesting the overly technical "algorithm" section of the manual, and forcing ourselves to do a good job at it is the other half of its objective.

[Footnote]

 * Having more than 100 as a value that is measured in "percent" is
   not unusual, by the way.  You can zoom into a picture at
   magnification level of 400%, for example.