On 10/16/2019 12:00 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > "James Coglan via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> This effect is applied to both "normal" two-parent merges, and to >> octopus merges. It also reduces the vertical space needed for pre-commit >> lines, as the merge occupies one less column than usual. >> >> Before: After: >> >> | * | * >> | |\ | |\ >> | | \ | * \ >> | | \ |/|\ \ >> | *-. \ >> | |\ \ \ > > Looking at these drawings reminded me of a tangent that is brought > up from time to time. We do not do great job when showing multiple > roots. > > If you have a history like this: > > A---D---E > / > B---C > > drawing the graph _with_ the merge gives a reasonable representation > of the entire topology. > > * 46f67dd E > * 6f89516 D > |\ > | * e6277a9 C > | * 13ae9b2 B > * afee005 A > > But if you start drawing from parents of D (excluding D), you'd get > this: > > * e6277a9 C > * 13ae9b2 B > * afee005 A I hit this very situation recently when I was experimenting with 'git fast-import' and accidentally created many parallel, independent histories. Running "git log --graph --all --simplify-by-decoration" made it look like all the refs were in a line, but they were not. (The one way I knew something was up: the base commits also appeared without a decoration. That was the only clue that the histories did not continue in a line.) > > and the fact that B and A do not share parent-child relationships is > lost. An easy way to show that would be to draw the bottom three > lines of the full history output we saw earlier: > > | * e6277a9 C > | * 13ae9b2 B > * afee005 A > > either with or without the vertical bar to imply that A may have a > child. The natural extension of this would be multiple columns: | | | | | * | | | | * | | | * | | * | * * This does not appear too cumbersome, and such a situation should be rare. > This is not something that has to be done as part of this series, > but I am hoping that the internal simplification and code > restructuring that is done by this series would make it easier to > enhance the system to allow such an output. I agree. An excellent idea for a follow-up. Thanks, -Stolee
