bug#6745: 24.0.50; vc-annotate should allow to configure the width of blame info

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com (Aneesh Kumar K.V) writes:

> This is with vc-git.el. With C-x v g it would be nice to be able to
> customize the width of blame info. That allows to see both the code
> and associate sha1 on the same window.

Yes, that would be great.  It has also been suggested that all the VC
backends should use the same format, and I think that could be done at
the same time.  (Even if they don't all have the same data available,
they generally have much in common.)

But to do that, I think we'd have to rework how vc-*-annotate-command
works.  I think they basically work by running the "blame" command for
the VC in a buffer, and then parsing/fontifying the output a bit?

To allow regularisation (and user customisation) of the output, I think
we'd have to redo that completely.  Instead the backends would dump the
output to a temp dir, we'd parse it completely, add it to some
structure, and then output the data into a buffer in the format we want.
(Something that looks a bit like tabulated-list-mode, but where the user
can, for instance, use commands to make columns disappear and appear as
they wish.)

I think that's more than doable, and worth doing.

I wonder whether anybody's had any concrete ideas in this direction
before (so I've added Dmitry to the CCs).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no