[PLUGIN] Lesslog -> run bzr log through less automatically

[Erik Bågfors]

> It sounds to me like you're solving the problem (reviewing all logs is
> generally not the most common operation) by introducing a workaround by
> using |less).

Nope,  I'm doing what I expect and know from other software.  I've
used cvs, svn and darcs, rcs and all of them prints the full log when
I ask them for the log.  The same way "grep blaha file" lists ALL
lines that matches "blaha" in the file.  I would be VERY surprised if
I didn't get them all.

This is the way 99% of unix commands work. They list everything you
ask for.  Can you imagine if find or ls would just give you part of
the output? :) (I know this is pushing it, but you get my point :) )

I use the unix tools daily and using "| less", "| grep" etc is very
common.  That's how I expect to solve the "problem" (as you call it, I
call it normal usage).


> For today's bzr.dev that takes almost 1 minute to produce the 19,293 lines
> of output in bzr log. Even if you hide the the output behind less the
> system is still heavily hitting the cpu/disk drive for the 8-12 seconds
> that its running -- which is a bit much for multi-user systems.

1 minute? What bzr are you using?

: [bagfors at zyrgelkwyt]$ ; time bzr log > /dev/null

real    0m10.443s
user    0m5.365s
sys     0m0.319s

10 seconds here.

Are you using gnome-terminal perhaps? It's dead slow, but that's not
bzr's fault.  In gnome-terminal it takes a minute to do it, in xterm
12.4 seconds.

> I believe that people are generally much more interested in the number of
> logs that fit on their screen with no wrap than they are in 833 screens of
> data.

Agreed, but I want to send it to less, to grep, to perl, to a file, to
an ssh connection etc.

The same as I do with any other command.

> So why not limit it to one screen? You wouldn't even need less most of the
> time! And if you wanted something more than the last 24 merges, then
> provide a option for the extra work. :)

I'm all for that, and I think it's fine to provide functionality to do
that.  "bzr last" or "bzr lastlog" or "bzr log -s" or something.  Just
don't destroy the normal bzr log.

> My ideal log command would be:
>
> bzr log [--full] [--merges] [--all | -r...]

I'd really hate that.  That means that I would have to do "bzr log
--full --merges --all | grep searchterm".  Most likely I would have to
start by doing "bzr log --help" to get to know how to write that line.

For me, searching through the history is quite common. It's quite
common if you are 50+ people working on the same project to need to
know who closed a specific bug, who added functionality,etc. And if
you have bzr/svn/etc in front of you it's more efficient just
searching the log than to go to the bugtrack.

In fact, I'd almost like "bzr log -v" to be default, then I can
search/grep/whatever for whatever I'm interested in, using the tools I
know and love :)

Logs from merges is the real killer thing for me, I'd really like that
to be default,  I can easily imagine the situation where merges are
very very common and half of all commits would just be "merge
from.....".  I strongly belive that people will be suprised if merges
and all are not default. I know I HATE that I loose all history from
merges in svn.

/Erik