Subject: bug#59491: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Mode-line elements too wide in some VC buffers

From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2022 10:43:29 -0800

On 11/23/2022 4:14 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Gabriel <[email-masked]>
>> Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2022 17:58:25 -0300
>>
>> For Git, a better option would be to use a "short revision" (by default
>> the first 7 characters of the "long revision")
> 
> AFAIR, just taking the first 7 characters is not safe; you need to ask Git.
> But maybe for this purpose taking 7 would be enough?

It'd be nice to pass this through `git rev-parse --short` or maybe even 
`git describe --always --all`. vc-git.el could also use something like 
this when it gets the ref for the modeline (see 
'vc-git-mode-line-string' and 'vc-git--symbolic-ref').

In fact, maybe there should be a generic VC function for getting a 
"friendly" string describing a commit. Then code could use that function 
in some/most cases instead of showing the full commit ID.