Re: [PATCH] add pretty format configuration to git log/show/whatchanged

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

In-tree, there are only two callers that do not use --pretty on the
command line when calling these three commands:

 * "bisect visualize" calls "git log" when gitk is not available, with the
   user supplied formatting options.  This is very much Ok --- we actively
   want your configuration feature for this caller.

 * "git merge --squash" calls "git log" to prepare the commit message
   template.  This is _not_ Ok, and will be broken if we accept your
   patch.

So you will need a preliminary patch to "git-merge" _before_ submitting
this patch to make the latter codepath use "git log --pretty" instead.
Doing so would have raised _my_ confidence level of the patch that you
made your best effort not to introduce regression.

I should point out that I did not look at things outside shell scripts,
i.e. stuff I do not consider really the core part of the system.  I did
not look at contrib/ area either.

I suspect the following have calls to show/log/whatchanged and do expect
to read the default format out of them, and can be broken by your patch:

 * contrib/emacs/git.el (git-setup-commit-buffer)
 * git-cvsserver.perl (sub update)

There also is a call to git log, but I think it is Ok.

 * contrib/hooks/post-receive (generate_general_email)

You should not blindly trust nor take the above as an exhaustive list; it
is just from my quick survey.