Hi Johannes, 

On Tue, 2017-04-25 at 22:08 +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Hi Liam,

On Tue, 25 Apr 2017, Liam Beguin wrote:

quoted

Add the 'rebase.abbrevCmd' boolean config option to allow `git rebase -i`
to abbreviate the command-names in the instruction list.

This means that `git rebase -i` would print:
    p deadbee The oneline of this commit
    ...

instead of:
    pick deadbee The oneline of this commit
    ...

Using a single character command-name allows the lines to remain
aligned, making the whole set more readable.

Signed-off-by: Liam Beguin <redacted>

Apart from either abbreviating commands after --edit-todo, or documenting
explicitly that the new config option only concerns the initial todo list,
there is another problem that just occurred to me: --exec.

When you call `git rebase -x "make DEVELOPER=1 -j15"`, the idea is to
append an "exec make DEVELOPER=1 -j15" line after every pick line. The
code in question looks like this:

add_exec_commands () {
        {
                first=t
                while read -r insn rest
                do
                        case $insn in
                        pick)
                                test -n "$first" ||
                                printf "%s" "$cmd"
                                ;;
                        esac
                        printf "%s %s\n" "$insn" "$rest"
                        first=
                done
                printf "%s" "$cmd"
        } <"$1" >"$1.new" &&
        mv "$1.new" "$1"
}

Obviously, the git-rebase--interactive script expects at this point that
the command is spelled out, so your patch needs to change the `pick)` case
to `p|pick)`, I think.

In addition, since the rationale for the new option is to align the lines
better, the `exec` would need to be replaced by `x`, and as multiple `-x`
options are allowed, you would need something like this at the beginning
of `add_exec_commands`, too:

	# abbreviate `exec` if rebase.abbrevCmd is true
	test p != "$rebasecmd" ||
	cmd="$(echo "$cmd" | sed 's/^exec/x/')"

Also:

quoted

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index 475e874d5155..8b1877f2df91 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt

@@ -2614,6 +2614,25 @@ rebase.instructionFormat::

 	the instruction list during an interactive rebase.  The format will automatically
 	have the long commit hash prepended to the format.
 
+rebase.abbrevCmd::

It does not fail to amuse that the term "abbrevCmd" is abbreviated
heavily itself. However, I would strongly suggest to avoid that. It would
be much more pleasant to call the config option rebase.abbreviateCommands

I tried to use something similar to the rest of the options but I guess that
would be best.

quoted

+rebase.abbrevCmd::
+	If set to true, `git rebase -i` will abbreviate the command-names in the
+	instruction list. This means that instead of looking like this,

This is by no means your fault, but it is really horrible by how many
different names Git's documentation refers to the todo script, nothing
short of confusing. It is the todo script (which I called it initially,
maybe not a good name, but it has the merit of the longest tradition at
least), the todo list, the instruction sheet, the rebase script, the
instruction list... etc

However, the thing is called "todo list" elsewhere in the same file,
therefore lets try to avoid even more confusion and use that term instead
of "instruction list" here.

thanks for pointing this out, I was not quite sure what to call this list.

quoted

diff --git a/git-rebase--interactive.sh b/git-rebase--interactive.sh
index 2c9c0165b5ab..9f3e82b79615 100644
--- a/git-rebase--interactive.sh
+++ b/git-rebase--interactive.sh

@@ -1210,6 +1210,10 @@ else

 	revisions=$onto...$orig_head
 	shortrevisions=$shorthead
 fi
+
+rebasecmd=pick
+test "$(git config --bool --get rebase.abbrevCmd)" = true && rebasecmd=p

A better name would be "pickcmd", as there are more rebase commands than
just `pick` and what we want here is really only associated with one of
those commands.

Wouldn't that make it confusing when the patch starts to handle other commands?
A common name across the script would limit further confusion.
I noticed that it is already called `action` in `rearrange_squash`.
would that do? (even though it has no reference to 'command')

Ciao,
Johannes

Thanks for the detailed answer,
Liam