Re: [PATCH] Add an option to git-ls-tree to display also the size of object

Jakub Narebski [off-list ref] writes:

Add -l/--long/--size option to git-ls-tree command, which displays
object size of an entry after object id (left-justified with minimum
width of 7 characters).

Not a NAK at all (but not an ACK either yet), but just asking
questions on some design considerations.

* Do these options do different things?  If not, why have more
  than one (or two, --long and its shorthand -l)?

* Why pad to 7 places?  Do we have a similar padding elsewhere?
  Will this ever used by non-scripts?  How does this padding
  affect parsers other than Perl that read this information?

* Does it make sense to show size information when giving a tree
  entry?  I realize not having it in the output would make the
  job of the script reading the output a bit harder, but if this
  output is meant also for human consumption I think it would
  not be so interesting and raise a confusion factor.

  Also I suspect that having to show the size of a tree object,
  expressed in terms of the canonical representation, might
  force packv4 aware ls-tree to convert its traversal efficient
  representation to the canonical one only to get its size.