Subject: Re: piped to a pager (was: how to speed up "git log"?)

From: Bruno Haible <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 01:09:26 +0100

Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> you can blame the person calling git log and waiting until it 
> finishes. See the list archives for reasons why.
... and earlier:
> Usually the output of git-log -- even with pathname 
> filtering -- starts almost instantaneous, and is piped to your pager.

The pager ('less') in a console is not a good solution for everone:
  - People used to GUI editors (kate, nedit, ...) miss a scroll bar for
    navigation. You can't use kate or nedit as a pager.
  - PAGER="vi -" also reads all input before it displays anything.
  - PAGER="xless" likewise.
  - In Emacs shell-mode, with PAGER="", you see the output as it is produced,
    but it's disturbing to work in a buffer which is growing, where the scrollbar
    continues to change its position.

It's OK for many people, but not for everyone.

Bruno