gigantic commit messages, was Re: Git Bug Report: out of memory using git tag

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 01:14:59AM -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 12:51 AM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> >
> > Here are patches which fix them both. I may be setting a new record for
> > the ratio of commit message lines to changed code
> 
> It looks like the first patch is 72 lines of commit message for a
> one-line fix, and the second patch is 61 lines of commit message for a
> two line fix.
> 
> I don't know what the record ratio is, but it's at least 96[1], so
> clearly you'll need to figure out how to pad your first commit message
> with at least another 25 lines before this series can be accepted.
> ;-)

Well, if we want to start digging things up... ;)

Try this:

  git log --no-merges --no-renames --format='%H %B' -z --numstat '*.c' |
  perl -0ne '
    chomp;
    if (s/^([0-9a-f]{40}) //) {
      if (defined $commit && $diff) {
        my $ratio = $body / $diff;
        print "$ratio $body $diff $commit\n";
      }
      $commit = $1;
      $body = () = /\n/g;
      $diff = 0;
    } elsif (/^\s*(\d+)\t/) {
      # this counts only added lines, under the assumption that
      # small commits generally remove/add in proportion. Of course
      # ones that _only_ remove lines have infinite ratios.
      $diff += $1;
    } else {
      die "confusing record: $_\n";
    }
  ' |
  sort -rn |
  head

which shows there are a few in the 100's. Pipe through:

  awk '{print $4}' |
  git log --stdin --no-walk=unsorted --stat

for a nicer view. I'm rejecting the top one on the grounds that it's
mostly cut-and-paste output, and also that #2 is mine. ;)

-Peff