On 05/12/16 18:10, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Ramsay Jones <ramsay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> Heh, that was the first version of the patch. However, I got to thinking >> about why --abbrev=7 was there in the first place; the only reason I >> could think of was to defeat local configuration to get a measure of >> reproducibility. >> >> Unfortunately, you can't get the 'auto' behaviour from --abbrev >> (on the pu branch): >> >> $ ./git describe --abbrev=-1 >> v2.11.0-286-g109e8 >> $ ./git describe --abbrev=0 >> v2.11.0 >> $ ./git describe >> v2.11.0-286-g109e8a99d >> $ > > What is the reason why the last one is undesirable? Is it because > the user may have core.abbrev set to some value in the configuration > and you want to override it to force "auto"? As I said, the original version of the patch just removed the --abbrev=7, but then I started to think about why you might have used --abbrev in the first place (first in commit 9b88fcef7 and again in commit bf505158d). Making sure to override the configuration was the only thing I could come up with. So, I was hoping you could remember why! :-P (I assumed it was to force a measure of uniformity/reproducibility). ATB, Ramsay Jones