Re: [PATCH/RFC] fmt-merge-msg: add a blank line after people info

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

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> But I do not know if it is an improvement from the current output before
> your patch, or if it is just wasting vertical space.

So I tend to edit out the "By Xyzzy" and "via So-and-so" lines,
although I do find them useful for actually writing the message.

However, if I were to keep them, I think I'd prefer the extra line
that Jonathan added.

What I *would* like, though, is that the "via So-and-so" shows up on
the same line as the "By Xyzzy", probably together with appropriate
word-wrapping (using strbuf_add_wrapped_text()?)

Btw, the counting of commits is broken for the merge people. Do this
in the kernel tree, just to see an example of the breakage:

    git checkout -b test-merges 59068e369b6a
    git merge e9e7183fd267

and see the suggested people counts:

    By Mark Brown (2) and others
    via Takashi Iwai (3) and Liam Girdwood (1)

and those "via" numbers make very little sense.

So the "By" number makes sense (counting non-merges). But the "via"
numbers are just odd. Seven of the commits were committed by Mark
Brown, but he's not mentioned in "via". Presumably because he's
already mentioned in the "By" line. But Mark was actually *more* of a
"via" person than Liam was, although Takashi is perhaps the most
important one because he's the "latest" one things flowed through.

I dunno. But it looks odd, and the above is not the only example of
"those counts don't make sense".

Anyway, I think the "via" line is odd the way it is. Lower-case "via"
implies that it's a continuation of the "By" sentence, but then it's
given a line of its own. Hmm?

                   Linus


                       Linus