Re: git notes: notes

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 03:36:36PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:

> I was asking hypothetically, trying to point out that parts of git log
> seem to make sense to be used as plumbing, with the hope I can continue
> to use it that way.
> 
> (Note that git instaweb parses output of git log --pretty=format:%H --raw
> like it's plumbing.)

I think this is a valid point. Note that "gitk" uses "git log
--pretty=raw". However, I believe it splits the entries on "^commit". So
I think there is some precedent for scripting "git log"; it has features
that are simply not available through other interfaces. And scripting
around "--pretty=raw" seems pretty reasonable to me, too. Why else would
you want the raw format?

Is splitting on blank lines an error? I don't think so. The original
format was never strictly defined, but given the --pretty=raw format, it
seems like a fairly obvious thing to do.

I am inclined to cut the notes output from --pretty=raw, and let callers
ask for them explicitly with --show-notes or something similar. We can
leave them on by default in the "normal" output. This will still break
scripts doing "git log | ./script", but I don't think we have ever
condoned that practice.

-Peff