Re: [PATCH v2] gitk: Add a "Copy commit summary" command

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 08:30:24AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> writes:
> 
> > We have an item in the preferences menu to control the SHA1 length
> > that is automatically selected when going to a new commit.  It's
> > stored in the variable $autosellen.  That seems like it would be a
> > reasonable choice for the SHA1 length to use here.
> 
> Reusing a configuration that is used to control something similar
> sounds sensible to me.
> 
> > The only possible
> > problem is that it defaults to 40 and so might give an overly long
> > result for some users.  Maybe you could use $autosellen but limit it
> > to at most 12 or 16 or something like that.
> 
> How is the thing that is "automatically selected when going to a new
> commit" used by the end user?  What is the reason why people may
> want to configure it?  I understand that this is the string that
> goes into the selection buffer, so presumably people are using this
> selection to paste elsewhere?  If so, that sounds like very similar
> to Beat's use case---perhaps if 40 is too long for Beat's use case
> as a sensible default, then it is also too long for its original use
> case?

It's used for pasting into commit messages and emails, and it's used
for pasting onto the command line when typing git commands.  For the
second, the length doesn't matter; the limit was added for the first
case.

> Or do you expect it to be common to want to use autosellen set to 40
> and Beat's abbrev len set to much shorter, e.g. 16?  If so they may
> deserve two different settings, with different defaults.

I would think that if $autosellen is 40 it's almost certainly because
the user hasn't found that control in the preferences window. :)

> Artificially limiting it to 12 or 16 does not sound all that
> sensible, though.

Adding --abbrev=$autosellen if $autosellen is not 40 sounds like it
would do what we want.

Paul.