On Mon, Jan 08, 2018 at 03:04:20PM -0500, Jeff Hostetler wrote: > > I was thinking about something similar to the logic we use today > > about whether to start reporting progress on other long commands. > > That would mean you could still get the ahead/behind values if you > > aren't that far behind but would only get "different" if that > > calculation gets too expensive (which implies the actual value isn't > > going to be all that helpful anyway). > > After a off-line conversation with the others I'm going to look into > a version that is limited to n commits rather than be completely on or > off. I think if you are for example less than 100 a/b then those numbers > have value; if you are past n, then they have much less value. > > I'd rather do it by a fixed limit than by time to ensure that output > is predictable on graph shape and not on system load. I like this direction a lot. I had hoped we could say "100+ commits ahead", but I don't think we can do so accurately without generation numbers. E.g., the case I mentioned at the bottom of this mail: https://public-inbox.org/git/20171224143318.GC23648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ I haven't thought too hard on it, but I suspect with generation numbers you could bound it and at least say "100+ ahead" or "100+ behind". But I don't think you can approximate both ahead and behind together without finding the actual merge base. But even still, finding small answers quickly and accurately and punting to "really far, I didn't bother to compute it" on the big ones would be an improvement over always punting. -Peff
