Re: questions / suggestions about history simplification

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 12:20:52PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Adam Spiers [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

2. What difference does --dense ever make?

It is set by default, and --sparse is its opposite option, i.e. it
turns revs->dense off.

Ah.  It appears to be missing from the man page that it's the default.

When revs->dense is turned off, the usual treesame logic does not
kick in to rewrite parents in a single strand of pearls (i.e. a
stretch of history that solely consists of non-merge commits).

I see.

quoted

3. Why is --sparse so called, given that it increases rather than
   decreases the number of commits shown?

The number of commits in the output will increase by including
commits that are irrelevant to explain the history of paths
specified by pathspec in revs->prune.  The information density
decreases as the result, and that is what "sparse" signifies.

Ah OK, that makes sense now, but not the most intuitive choice of name
IMHO.  I would have gone for something like --all-commits, but I guess
it's way too late to change now.