Re: [PATCH 2/2] branch, for-each-ref: add option to omit empty lines

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2023, 18:20 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqo7o0q3e4.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20230406171203.GB2709660@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> It might be enough to flip the default unconditionally (no config), but
> I think we may still want "--no-omit-empty-lines" as an escape hatch. I
> dunno. Maybe that is somehow choosing the worst of both worlds.

It is very tempting, indeed. We can add the escape hatch and flip the default, and only when somebody complains, come back and say "oh, sorry, we didn't know anybody used it" and flip the default back, perhaps?

This is a totally unrelated tangent, but it is a bit unfortunate that with our parse-options API, it is not trivial to

 - mark that "--keep-empty-lines" and "--omit-empty-lines" toggle
   the same underlying Boolean variable,

 - accept "--no-keep" and "--no-omit" as obvious synonyms for
   "--omit" and "--keep",

 - have "git foo -h" listing to show "--keep" and "--omit" together,

 - omit these "--no-foo" variants from "git foo -h" listing.

by the way.