On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 12:22:10PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > To be clear, which approach are we talking about? I think there are
> > three options:
> >
> > 1. The user tells us not to bother computing real ahead/behind values.
> > We always say "same" or "not the same".
> >
> > 2. The user tells us not to bother computing ahead/behind values
> > with more effort than N. After traversing N commits without getting
> > an answer, we say "same" or "not the same". But we may sometimes
> > give a real answer if we found it within N.
> >
> > 3. The user tells us not to spend more effort than N. After traversing
> > N commits we try to make some partial statement based on
> > generations (or commit timestamps as a proxy for them).
> >
> > I agree that (3) is probably not going to be useful enough in the
> > general case to merit the implementation effort and confusion. But is
> > there anything wrong with (2)?
>
> I agree (3) would not be all that interesting. Offhand I do not see
> a problem with (2). I think with "real" in your "sometimes give a
> real answer" you meant to say that we limit our answers to just one
> three ("same", "not the same", "ahead/behind by exactly N/M") and I
> think it is a good choice that is easy to explain.
Yes, exactly. That's a better way of saying it.
-Peff
