Re: [PATCH] Documentation/process: hardcoded core.abbrev considered harmful!

From: Frank Rowand
Date: Wed Jan 30 2019 - 18:43:40 EST


On 1/29/19 4:18 PM, Stephen Rothwell wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 01:01:12 +0100 Ãvar ArnfjÃrà Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Stop recommending that core.abbrev=12 be hardcoded when referring to
>> kernel commits, and instead rely on the git's default abbreviation.
>>
>> Hardcoding this at "12" was done in
>> 8401aa1f5997 ("Documentation/SubmittingPatches: describe the Fixes:
>> tag", 2014-06-06), back then Linus's git/git@e6c587c733 ("abbrev: auto
>> size the default abbreviation", 2016-09-30) had not yet landed, and
>> the default abbreviation was "7".
>>
>> At the time linux.git had around 3.5 million objects, so if the auto
>> sizing had been in effect "11" would have been picked. Now "12" is
>> what we pick by default anyway.
>>
>> More importantly, we'll roll over to "13" at around 16 million
>> objects, which given the growth rate isn't that far off. At that point
>> this documentation will be worse than the default.
>>
>> Let's just stop doing this. Git versions as of 2.11 released over 2
>> years ago use the auto-sizing, and it seems like a fair assumption
>> that kernel developers use a fairly recent git version.

That might not be a fair assumption. The two systems that I submit
patches from have git versions older than 2.11.

-Frank


>>
>> Signed-off-by: Ãvar ArnfjÃrà Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> Acked-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Since I have been checking Fixes: tags, it has become obvious that some
> kernel developers have core.abbrev set to 7, 9 or 10 (or maybe they are
> running very old versions of git). Hopefully this will encourage them
> to remove that setting (and upgrade).
>
> Can someone (Jon?) please apply this patch?
>