Subject: Re: [PATCH] graph.c: visual difference on subsequent series

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015 13:17:40 -0700

Antoine Beaupré <[email-masked]> writes:

> Any reason why this patch wasn't included / reviewed?
> ...
>> This patch is similar than the one provided by Milton Soares Filho in
>> [email-masked] but was
>> implemented independently and uses the 'o' character instead of 'x'.

The reason why Milton's patch was not taken after discussion [*1*]
was not because its implementation was poor, but its design was not
good.  By overriding '*' '<' or '>' with x, it made it impossible to
distinguish a root on the left side branch and a root on the right
side branch.

Is the design of your independent implementation the same except
that 'o' is used instead of 'x'?  Independent implementation does
not make the same design magically better, if that is the case ;-)

If the design is different, please explain how your patch solves the
issue with Milton's design in your log message.

For example, you could use the column arrangement to solve it, e.g.

History sequence A: a1 -- a2 -- a3 (root-commit)
History sequence B: b1 -- b2 -- b3 (root-commit)

    $ git log --graph --oneline A B
    * a1
    * a2
    * a3
      * b1
      * b2
      * b3

    $ git log --graph --oneline --left-right A...B
    < a1
    < a2
    < a3
      > b1
      > b2
      > b3

I am not saying that the above would be the only way to do so; there
may be other ways to solve the issue.

[Reference]

*1* http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/236708/focus=236843