Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] gitk: pass --no-graph to `git log`

[Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 1:00 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
> > Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> What if we make log.graph=true also require feature.experimental=true?
> >
> > No.  feature.experimental is to give people an opt-in opportunity
> > for features that we are considering to enable by default.
> >
> >> The log.graph option would really be a useful feature for people who
> >> use Git exclusively from the CLI without any external tools. It seems
> >> that the main challenge is how to give others time to adjust.
>
> Let me clarify the first point by stating it a bit differently.
>
> feature.experimental is all about this:
>
>     We have an idea for this new feature.  We made it useful, and
>     also made it not to regress the end-user experience for those
>     who do not need the new feature, to the best of our ability.
>     But there may be use cases we failed to consider while doing
>     so.  So let's ask early adopters, who may use Git in contexts
>     that are very different from ours, to try testing it out in
>     their daily use, to see if there are unexpected glitches.
>
> You do not have to argue how the --graph feature may be useful for
> character terminal users.  We already know it is, otherwise we
> wouldn't have added it in the first place.
>
> And arguing how --graph feature is useful does not help prove
> anything, when at the issue is if it is a good idea to allow the
> log.graph configuration variable to affect (unfortunate) scripts
> people wrote around "git log", instead of using plumbing commands,
> negatively.  We already know it will hurt to force everybody to
> update their script to explicitly pass --no-graph on the command
> line.  This series hasn't done any of the "not to regress to the
> best of our ability" part.
>
> If there were an agreement on the general direction to _forbid_ use
> of "git log" in scripts, which would require coordinated efforts to
> help people migrate over time, e.g.
>
>  - improve plumbing by adding features that people piled only on
>    "git log" without allowing plumbing users the same over time.
>
>  - perhaps an automated way to convert scripts that use "git log" to
>    instead use "git log --no-graph"
>
> to help script writers migrate away from "git log", adding log.graph
> configuration variable may become very a good idea.
>
> But without such effort starting at the same time and gaining
> consensus (or already underway), just adding such a variable to
> break existing scripts would not be a good idea worth asking the
> early adopters to test.  We already know it would break scripts.

Okay. Thanks for the explanation!

-Alex