Subject: Re: [PATCH 6/6] diff-merges: let -m imply -p

From: Sergey Organov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 17:03:02 +0300

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

> If we enable "some kind of diff" for "-m", I actually think that by
> default "git log -m" should be turned into "log --cc".  As you told
> Alex in your response, "log -m -p" is a quite unpleasant format to
> read---it is there only because it was the only thing we had before
> we invented "-c/--cc".

Please, no! --cc has unfortunate feature of outputting exactly nothing
for a lot of merge commits, causing even more confusion than historical
"-m -p" format.

The best default for -m output is --diff-merges=first-parent. Everybody
is familiar with it, and it's useful.

> But that might be outside the scope of this series.  I dunno, but if
> there is no other constraints (like backward compatibility issues),
> I have a moderately strong preference to use "--cc" over "-m -p"
> from the get go for unconfigured people, rather than forcing
> everybody to configure

I rather have strong preference for --diff-merges=first-parent. --cc is
only suitable for Git experts, and they know how to get what they want
anyway. Yep, by using --cc. Why spare yet another short option for that?

Overall, let's rather make -m give diff to the first parent by default.
Simple. Useful. Not confusing.

Thanks,
-- Sergey Organov