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Oct 19, 2016
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rn20: Changing the default for "core.abbrev"? #195

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40 changes: 40 additions & 0 deletions rev_news/drafts/edition-20.md
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Expand Up @@ -24,6 +24,46 @@ This edition covers what happened during the month of September 2016.

### Reviews

* [Changing the default for "core.abbrev"?](http://public-inbox.org/git/CA+55aFy0_pwtFOYS1Tmnxipw9ZkRNCQHmoYyegO00pjMiZQfbg@mail.gmail.com/)

Linus Torvalds asked for increasing the default value for number of
characters in SHA-1 abbreviations. The `default_abbrev = 7` was
reasonable at early days of Git, but the project of size of the
Linux kernel needs `git config --global core.abbrev 12`; while Git
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I would say "a project of the size of the Linux Kernel" instead but I am not a native speaker so I might be wrong.

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Also I wonder if the semicolon could be replaced by a full stop.

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Yes using "a" here is correct (and probably s/at early days/in the early days/).

I also agree that a period is preferable to a semi-colon here.

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Thanks @peff ! I will make those changes.

will extend the seven hex digits until the object name is unique,
that only reflects the *current* situation in the repository. It gets
annoying when a commit message has a short git ID that is no longer
unique a few months later when one needs to go back and try to figure
out what went wrong in that commit.

Jeff King, alias Peff, answered the *"it gets annoying"* part in the
[[PATCH 0/10] helping people resolve ambiguous sha1s](https://public-inbox.org/git/[email protected]/)
patch series (merged in [66c22ba6](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/git/git.git/commit/?id=66c22ba6fbe0724ecce3d82611ff0ec5c2b0255f)).
This patch series taught Git to help in the situation where only
ambiguous shortened identifier is available, by listing the SHA-1s
of the objects it found, along with a few bits of information that
may help the user decide which one they meant.

> $ git rev-parse b2e1
> error: short SHA1 b2e1 is ambiguous
> hint: The candidates are:
> hint: b2e1196 tag v2.8.0-rc1
> hint: b2e11d1 tree
> hint: b2e1632 commit 2007-11-14 - Merge branch 'bs/maint-commit-options'
> hint: b2e1759 blob
> hint: b2e18954 blob
> hint: b2e1895c blob

The problem of Git providing SHA-1 abbreviation which would soon be
invalid was solved in different way than proposed by Linus. Instead
of increasing the default abbrev length for all projects, making abbrevs
longer and more unwieldy also for small projects that don't need it,
Peff [proposed](https://public-inbox.org/git/[email protected]/)
to make default abbrev length be dynamically based on the number of objects
in the repository. Linus sent [rough implementation](https://public-inbox.org/git/CA+55aFwbCNiF0nDppZ5SuRcZwc9kNvKYzgyd_bR8Ut8XRW_p4Q@mail.gmail.com/)
of this idea, which after a few iterations (and cleanups of related code)
got merged into 'next' as [bb188d00f7](https://github.com/git/git/commit/bb188d00f7).

* [Prepare the sequencer for the upcoming rebase -i patches](http://public-inbox.org/git/[email protected]/)

Johannes Schindelin, alias Dscho, is the maintainer of Git for
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