Subject: Re: [PATCH] remote: align --verbose output with spaces

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2024 12:21:37 -0800

shejialuo <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Tue, Dec 17, 2024 at 12:39:36PM +0000, Wang Bing-hua via GitGitGadget wrote:
>> From: Wang Bing-hua <[email-masked]>
>> 
>> Remote names exceeding a tab width could cause misalignment.

If all of them are named with ten ASCII characters, on a terminal
with fixed-width font, things will still display aligned ;-)

>> Align --verbose output with spaces instead of a tab.
>> 
>
> Good enhancement.

With a Devil's advocate hat on, a change like this will completely
break tools when they are reading the "--verbose" output and
expecting that the fields are separated with a TAB (in other words,
the tab is *not* about alignment in the first place for them).

Now with that hat off.

For users with that many remotes where the alignment of URLs in the
interactive "git remote -v" output matter, I am not sure if this
change is a real improvement enough that it is worth the possible
risk of breaking existing tools.  With that many remotes defined,
wouldn't they be doing "git remote -v" piped to "grep '^name<TAB>'"
or something?  That use case would break with the change, too.

Thanks.