Re: [ENHANCEMENT/BUG] svn list --verbose should not cut the author in the output

Getting back to the recent report that prompted me to add "svn list --xml"...

Laszlo Kishalmi <laszlo_kishalmi@epam.com> writes:
>It seems that the command line subversion client cuts the author at
>8th character in its output.
>This command would be perfect to generate a list of the files in the
>repository with the current author.

Well, that's perhaps not the intended use of "svn list", but not wrong either.
  Maybe the new "svn list --xml" will solve this particular case.

>We have several colleagues here with the same long forename, so I have
>to collect this info in an other way.

This scanario is not uncommon. Some development teams have a custom of people
going by their initials, so user names are very short. Some companies allocate
people their full first and last names, perhaps with a space or some other
character in between, thus making long user names. In some cultures, people's
names are generally much longer than in others.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a config option for user
name field width in command-line client displays.

Karl Fogel wrote:
> ### Section for controlling output formats of the command-line client.
> [output]
> ### Show up to this many columns of username in (e.g.) 'svn ls -v'
> ### and 'svn status' output. If you specify a value, it will apply to
> ### all commands that print usernames. If you don't, the default is 8
> ### columns for 'svn ls', and 12 columns for 'svn status' (this is for
> ### backwards compatibility with versions before this parameter was
> ### configurable.
> # username-width = 12
>
> If there are any other width-sensitive places where we print username,
> we'll include them too, I just haven't dug around for them yet.

That solves part of the problem in a compatible and fairly neat way. (Yes, it
adds another config option, but it seems worth it in this case.)

Related problems (sorry, "opportunities", as my manager used to say) are:

+ "list" cuts off the user name whereas "status" and "blame" expand the field
instead. This is needlessly inconsistent, but I'm not sure which behaviour is
better.

+ The revision number fields also have inconsistent width among "list",
"status" and "blame".

+ The 44-character date in "blame -v" is, IMO, too long, and should be changed
to the short form that "list" uses.

+ The output of "status" is going to change anyway to accommodate locking.

I wonder if there is a way to address several of these issues in one go.

At least, I would like to implement the "username-width" option if others agree.

- Julian

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Received on Tue Jan 25 20:16:21 2005