RE: [PATCH 1/2] revision: Denote root commits with '#'

-----Original Message-----
From: Junio C Hamano <redacted>
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2021 1:07 PM

"Jason Pyeron" writes:

quoted

Summary: --graph used with --oneline sometimes produces ambiguous
output when more than one commit has no parents and are not yet
merged
...

quoted

"(branch name)" in the output, instead of painting the commit in the
graph by replacing the '*' node with something else.

And how often do you really need to see commits near the root, say
the earliest 100 commits, in the 35k+ commit history?  Is it really
necessary to tell which among these 100 is the root?

Yes, and the assumption that they are at the beginning is flawed too.

$ git log --oneline --graph --all | cat -n | egrep $(git rev-list --max-parents=0 --all | cut -c 1-8

| tr '\n' '|' | head -c -1)

quoted

    87  | | * be2c70b7 bug 2252 test case (e.g. for tomcat 9 with unpackWARs=false)
  2161  | | * 8ef73128 Add migrate-from-blackfat.sql
  2164  | | * 5505e019 initial
  2235  | | | | | | | | | | | | | * 83337c67 intial
  2921  | | | | * ca14dc49 Initial commit
  2931  | | | * cbdce824 initial commit
  2963  | | * 8f1828c1 Base applet
  2971  | * 658af21f parrent pom
  3026  * 8356af31 Initial commit from Create React App

git log --oneline --graph produces 3026 lines in this example.

Hmph.  Are you saying that you have 3000+ root commits in the 35k+
history?

I think you misread the specific example of 9 roots in 3026 commits, distributed throughout history.

Whether we add '[root]' decoration to the true roots (like
'(branchname)' decoration we add to branch tips), or painted '*' in
a different color (like '#'), you do not have to look for 'initial',
so having that many roots will not be a problem per-se with respect
to the "log" output, but there must be something strange going on.

I am not going to ask you why you need so many roots, because I
suspect that I will regret asking ;-).

By the way, I sense that your problem description is flip-flopping
again and I can no longer keep track of.  The way I read the message
I got from Kyle was, even when a graph has two commits that have no
parents in the visible part of the history, either Kyle wanted (or
Kyle got an impression after talking to you that you wanted) to see
these differently if one of them is a root and the other is non-root
(but happens to have none of its parents shown due to A..B range).
And that is why I started asking how meaningful to special case only
"root".

I may be having trouble with my writing, apologies.

Here is the issue (bug):

1. I never want to see a commit implied to be the parent of an unrelated commit.
2. I never want to see a commit implied to be the child of an unrelated commit.

--graph --oneline is broken with regards to the man page and my desire to not be confused by the implication of relationship for inappropriately connected nodes on the graph.

| | * 1234567 commit child of 2345678
| | * 2345678 the first commit, having no parent
| | * 9876543 an unrelated commit and child of 8765432
| | * 8765432 ...

Now the message from you I am responding to in the "Sumary" above
says that it is not "root" but is about the placement of graph
nodes.

One and the same issue. Placing an * directly above another * is the issue.

Solution #1

| | * 1234567 commit child of 2345678
| | # 2345678 the first commit, having no parent
| | * 9876543 an unrelated commit and child of 8765432
| | * 8765432 ...

Or

Solution #2

| | * 1234567 commit child of 2345678
| | * 2345678 the first commit, having no parent
| |
| | * 9876543 an unrelated commit and child of 8765432
| | * 8765432 ...

Or

Solution #3

| | * 1234567 commit child of 2345678
| | \
| |  * 2345678 the first commit, having no parent
| | * 9876543 an unrelated commit and child of 8765432
| | * 8765432 ...

All of these solutions will solve the bug. #1 seems to be the easiest and becomes searchable. You have indicated that #3 others have failed to do so. #2 is very much aligned to the --graph without --oneline

So, I dunno, with changing the description of the goalpost.  Now it
is that "root" is so not special at all and we only care about that
the a commit, none of whose parents are in the part of the shown
history, is shown in such a way that the user can tell that any
unrelated commits shown in the graph near it are not parents of such
a commit?  Or do you still want to show such a commit in two ways,
one for root and one for the ones above the boundary?

A commit without a parent is special - it has no parent. This means it has no history beyond that point. Something special happened at that time - the birth of new source code in source control.

Hopefully, I have cleared up the ambiguous wording.