Re: [PATCH 2/4] log and rev-list: Fixed newline termination issues with --graph

[Adam Simpkins <adam@adamsimpkins.net>]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 10:43:09AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > The main drawback is that dropping the automatic separator breaks
> > existing uses. We could work around this by automatically appending '%n'
> > if there is no use of "%n" or "%N",...
> 
> Yeah, I agree that sounds quite bad, and that is why I favor more explicit
> and independent way to choose between separator and terminator (like the
> "tformat" thing).

How about an extra option to explicitly toggle the separator on or
off?  For example, how about "--sep=<count>"?  Using --sep=0 would put
no separator between entries.  --sep=N would put N separators between
entries.

If this option isn't explicitly specified, the default should be
--sep=0 for ONELINE, and --sep=1 for everything else.  Using --sep=2
with USERFORMAT would achieve the behavior of getting an extra line of
padding between entries.


This still leaves unresolved the fact that the USERFORMAT output ends
with a missing newline in most cases.  I can see the argument for
doing this when using -z, which is primarily aimed for programmatic
consumption.  However, without -z, I don't think this is the behavior
most users expect.  For example, try running
"git --no-pager log -1 --pretty=format:%H".

If we were starting from scratch, and didn't have to worry about
breaking existing behavior, I would say that USERFORMAT should always
terminate entries in a newline, and then default to --sep=0.  As it
is, it might be easiest just to leave the current behavior, without a
terminating newline.

-- 
Adam Simpkins
adam@adamsimpkins.net