Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] gitk: Add a "Copy commit summary" command

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2015 08:30:24 -0700

Paul Mackerras <[email-masked]> writes:

> We have an item in the preferences menu to control the SHA1 length
> that is automatically selected when going to a new commit.  It's
> stored in the variable $autosellen.  That seems like it would be a
> reasonable choice for the SHA1 length to use here.

Reusing a configuration that is used to control something similar
sounds sensible to me.

> The only possible
> problem is that it defaults to 40 and so might give an overly long
> result for some users.  Maybe you could use $autosellen but limit it
> to at most 12 or 16 or something like that.

How is the thing that is "automatically selected when going to a new
commit" used by the end user?  What is the reason why people may
want to configure it?  I understand that this is the string that
goes into the selection buffer, so presumably people are using this
selection to paste elsewhere?  If so, that sounds like very similar
to Beat's use case---perhaps if 40 is too long for Beat's use case
as a sensible default, then it is also too long for its original use
case?

Or do you expect it to be common to want to use autosellen set to 40
and Beat's abbrev len set to much shorter, e.g. 16?  If so they may
deserve two different settings, with different defaults.

Artificially limiting it to 12 or 16 does not sound all that
sensible, though.

Thanks.