Re: gitk changing line color for no reason after merge

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>]

Pavel Roskin writes:
> Hello!

> I didn't realize that the colors correspond to nodes, not branches.
> Every node has one color that is used for lines to all of its children.
> It would be much better to assign colors to "branches" consisting of
> individual lines connecting nodes, but changing that would require many

Why would that be better?

> > -    if {$nparents($id) <= 1 && $nchildren($id) == 1} {
> > +    if {$nchildren($id) == 1} {
> >  	set child [lindex $children($id) 0]
> >  	if {[info exists colormap($child)]
> >  	    && $nparents($child) == 1} {
> > 
> > 
> 
> I still stand behind this patch because it eliminates color changes on
> the nodes that have exactly one child and parent.  $nparents($id) is

Ummm... I don't see that you have changed anything for nodes that have
exactly one parent?

> However, further changes to reduce color changes didn't produce nice
> results for me.  If I try to keep one color running as long as possible,
> I get branches of the same color because, as I said, gitk uses the same
> color for connections to all children.  So, every node on the branch
> spurs branching lines of the same color, which can intersect or run
> side-by-side.

The colors are really just to make the lines visually distinct.  They
(the colors) have no semantic meaning.  (I did try coloring the lines
according to the committer, but I just ended up with an awful lot of
lines being the same color - corresponding to one Linus Torvalds. :)

Paul.