Re: [PATCH/TOY] Shortcuts to quickly refer to a commit name with keyboard

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 05:22:49PM +0700, Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy wrote:

> OK This patch is horrible. Though the idea is cool and I've found it
> very useful. So here it is. Perhaps the idea may be revised a bit
> that's more suitable for more than one user.
> 
> The problem is old, SHA-1 name is not keyboard-friendly, even in
> abbreviated form. And recent change has made abbrev form longer,
> harder to type. Most of the time I just go with copy/paste with the
> mouse, which I don't like. name-rev helps a bit, but it's still long
> to type (especially with all the ^ and ~ that requires holding shift
> down).

Not really a comment on your patch itself, but I think a lot of people
solve this at a higher level, either in their terminal or via a tool
like tmux.

I recently taught urxvt to recognize sha1s and grab them via keyboard
hints, and I'm finding it quite useful. Here's what it looks like if
you're interested:

  http://peff.net/git-hints.gif

The hints technique is taken from pentadactyl (which I also use), but
the urxvt port is mine. I'm happy to share the code.

Which isn't to say solving it inside Git is wrong, but I've found it
really convenient for two reasons:

  1. It works whenever you see a sha1, not just in git commands (so
     emails, inside commit messages, etc).

  2. It doesn't take any screen space until you're ready to select.

The big downside is that it's scraping the screen, so you're guessing at
what is a sha1. False positives are a little annoying, but usually not
that big a deal because you're already looking at what you want to
select, and the hint pops up right there.

-Peff