Re: [PATCH 1/2] gitk: use --pretty=reference to generate the commit summary

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 10, 2019, 01:46 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqsgltrm01.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20191209182534.309884-1-dev+git@drbeat.li>

Beat Bolli <dev+git@drbeat.li> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Git learned the "reference" pretty format in 1f0fc1db85 (pretty:
> implement 'reference' format, 2019-11-19). Use it also in gitk instead
> of duplicating the format string. This way, gitk always follows the
> formatting convention defined by git.
>
> Signed-off-by: Beat Bolli <dev+git@drbeat.li>
> ---
> Junio, this goes on top of dl/pretty-reference, currently in pu.

Sorry, but it will not X-< for at least two reasons.

1. gitk is maintained as a separate project, so any patch to it will
   have to come via Paul's gitk tree where it has this script the
   patch touches at the root level of the working tree.  It will not
   build on top of any of the topic branches I keep track of.

2. In order to use "--pretty=ref" in gitk, of course, it must be
   used with version of Git that has dl/pretty-reference included,
   but gitk program is meant to be compatible with any reasonably
   recent version of Git (to put it differently, it is not a
   requirement to have git version X in order to use gitk version Y
   where Y <= X), so it means that this patch has to wait for a few
   releases after the version of Git that has the pretty-reference
   stuff ships.

I personally suspect that it no longer makes much sense to still require gitk to be usable with older version of Git these days, even though I do understand that the discipline to depend only on more stable features that appeared in older releases probably was a good one in earlier days. But gitk is not my project, so until Paul declares that gitk versions will go hand-in-hand with git, 2. above holds.

Thanks.