The default of 7 comes from fairly early in git development, when
seven hex digits was a lot (it covers about 250+ million hash
values). Back then I thought that 65k revisions was a lot (it was what
we were about to hit in BK), and each revision tends to be about 5-10
new objects or so, so a million objects was a big number.
These days, the kernel isn't even the largest git project, and even
the kernel has about 220k revisions (_much_ bigger than the BK tree
ever was) and we are approaching two million objects. At that point,
seven hex digits is still unique for a lot of them, but when we're
talking about just two orders of magnitude difference between number
of objects and the hash size, there _will_ be collisions in truncated
hash values. It's no longer even close to unrealistic - it happens all
the time.
We should both increase the default abbrev that was unrealistically
small, _and_ add a way for people to set their own default per-project
in the git config file.
This is the first step to first make it configurable; the default of 7
is not raised yet.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
GIT - the stupid content tracker
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.
- random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not
actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a
mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
- stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the
dictionary of slang.
- "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually
works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
- "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public License.
It was originally written by Linus Torvalds with help of a group of
hackers around the net. It is currently maintained by Junio C Hamano.
Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
See Documentation/gittutorial.txt to get started, then see
Documentation/everyday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and
Documentation/git-commandname.txt for documentation of each command.
If git has been correctly installed, then the tutorial can also be
read with "man gittutorial" or "git help tutorial", and the
documentation of each command with "man git-commandname" or "git help
commandname".
CVS users may also want to read Documentation/gitcvs-migration.txt
("man gitcvs-migration" or "git help cvs-migration" if git is
installed).
Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git-scm.com/
including full documentation and Git related tools.
The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git
mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature
requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org. To subscribe
to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in the body to
majordomo@vger.kernel.org. The mailing list archives are available at
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git and other archival sites.
The messages titled "A note from the maintainer", "What's in
git.git (stable)" and "What's cooking in git.git (topics)" and
the discussion following them on the mailing list give a good
reference for project status, development direction and
remaining tasks.
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