Re: [RFC PATCH] Make gitk use --early-output

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Sun, 4 Nov 2007, Marco Costalba wrote:
> 
> But --early-output does not imply --topo-order, I guess...

Well, it does right now, because I imagined that the primary users would 
always want the topological sort.

However, I have to admit that --early-output *could* be used even without 
the topological sort, because it also works for other cases that require 
up-front limiter logic - things like ranges of commits also have to be 
fully evaluated before they are totally certain, so I could imagine seeing 
some visualizer some day that doesn't need the topo-order sort, but does 
want to get a "preliminary" list.

That said, it does seem unlikely. Anybody who asks for --early-output is 
pretty much invariably going to be an interactive visulizer: the whole 
notion doesn't make much sense otherwise. So I think I made the right 
choice in making --early-output imply topo-order, and if somebody ever 
wants to not get the output topologically sorted (unlikely), we could add 
a "--no-topo-order" flag.

Side note: if you want the "--date-order", you do need to specify *both* 
--early-output and --date-order, and it will do the right thing (ie both 
the preliminary output and the final one will be topologically sorted, but 
within that topo-sort it will be in date order rather than clumped by 
the "shape" of the history).

			Linus