Re: [PATCH v5] tracking branches: add advice to ambiguous refspec error

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

>>>> +				 "To support setting up tracking branches, ensure that\n"
>>>> +				 "different remotes' fetch refspecs map into different\n"
>>>> +				 "tracking namespaces."),
>>>> +			       orig_ref,
>>>> +			       remotes_advice.buf
>>>> +			       );
>>>
>>> Nit: The usual style for multi-line arguments is to "fill" lines until
>>> you're at 79 characters, so these last three lines (including the ");")
>>> can all go on the "tracking namespaces" line (until they're at 79, then
>>> wrap)>
>>
>> I didn't know about the magic "79" number.  It makes the resulting
>> source code extremely hard to read, though, while making it easier
>> to grep for specific messages.
>
> I'm referring to the "80 characters per line", but omitted the \n, but
> yeah, I should have just said 80.

No, what I meant was that you do not want the rule to be to cut *AT*
exactly the column whatever random rule specifies, which would
result in funny wrapping in the middle of the word, e.g.

        "To support setting up tracking branches, ensure that diff"
        "erent remotes' fetch refspecs map into different tracking"
        " namespaces."

and "at 79, then wrap" somehow sounded to me like that.  I do not
think you meant to imply that (instead, I think you meant to suggest
"wrap the line so that the string constant is not longer than 79
columns"), but it risks to be mistaken by new contributors.

FWIW, I'd actually prefer to see both the sources to be readable by
wrapping to keep the source code line length under certain limit
(the current guideline being 70-something), counting the leading
indentation, and at the same time keep it possible and easy to grep
messages in the source.

That requires us to notice when our code has too deeply nested,
resulting in overly indented lines, and maintain the readability
(refatoring the code may be a way to help in such cases).