[MERGE] log -n/--levels

[Ian Clatworthy]

John Arbash Meinel wrote:

> I'm okay with this change, though I'm not sure that it really provides
> much. I think people either care about merges or don't. So they'll
> either use -n0 or -n1, but there isn't really a use case for -n2.

I agree that -n0 and -n1 are the most common cases by a long way.

> That said, if someone can provide a concrete use case for "-n2" I don't
> have a
> problem supporting it.

On a personal note, I find the output from 'log -n2 --short bzr.dev'
slightly better signal-to-noise-ratio-wise than -n0. That might not be
sufficient justification though so let me ramble a bit ..

The value or otherwise is obviously dependent on the workflow used.
For example, imagine a large development team split into sub-teams
where the team leaders play gatekeepers for their areas of
responsibility and the overall technical lead merges from the subteam
integration branches, i.e. he/she is the trunk gatekeeper. In that case,
looking down two levels is useful I think. I guess a similar thing
could be achieved by supporting a list of committers (or branch nicks)
as a log filter. (Perhaps that sort of filtering is better handled by
something like bzr-search though?)

In general, we want to promote and encourage merging over rebasing.
I feel arbitrary level control in log is (a small) part of that
philosophy.

Ian C.