How can I improve vc-mode emacs annotation?

Question

I find hg annotate very useful for tracking the origin of the code, but I can see that in vc mode emacs vc-annotate ... is not very good. Here is a snippet:

 297 Wed Oct 06 15:21:30 2010 -0600 aws/lib/survey/creator/dbTemplates/web/views.sql: $$,$$ 687 Mon Dec 20 10:25:41 2010 -0700 aws/lib/survey/creator/dbTemplates/web/views.sql: GRANT SELECT ON survey_length_view TO reportuser,surveyuser,sampleserver,sampleloader; 687 Mon Dec 20 10:25:41 2010 -0700 aws/lib/survey/creator/dbTemplates/web/views.sql: GRANT ALL ON survey_length_view TO adminuser, GROUP staff; 297 Wed Oct 06 15:21:30 2010 -0600 aws/lib/survey/creator/dbTemplates/web/views.sql: $$); 

As you can see, there is a lot of preamble and enough redundant information. I don't need to know the full ISO timestamp (most of the time, anyway), and the file path is covered by the fact that I was in the file when I decided to annotate. I need to know who made the changes, which is missing here.

How can I fix this annotation tool so that it becomes useful?

Answer 1

vc-hg.el seems to hardcode the hg annotate arguments, so you will need to redefine the command after loading vc-hg:

 (require 'vc-hg) (defun vc-hg-annotate-command (file buffer &optional revision) "Execute \"hg annotate\" on FILE, inserting the contents in BUFFER. Optional arg REVISION is a revision to annotate from." (vc-hg-command buffer 0 file "annotate" "-d" "-n" "--follow" (when revision (concat "-r" revision)))) 

Just deleting the arguments will probably lead to a loss of functionality due to missing information, so the best solution would be to follow the example in vc-bzr.el, where some of the information is deleted and placed in a hint instead, If you go down this route, think about making changes in emacs.

Answer 2

I also had this problem, here is my solution:

 ;; vc-mode (defconst vc-hg-annotate-better-re "^[ ]*\\(.+?\\) \\([0-9]+\\) \\([0-9a-f]+\\) \\(.+?\\+[0-9]+\\) +\\(.+?\\):\\([0-9]+\\):\\(.*\n?\\)") (defconst vc-hg-annotate-result-re "^[\t ]*\\([0-9]+\\) +\\(.+?\\) .*") (eval-after-load "vc-hg" '(defun vc-hg-annotate-command (file buffer &optional revision) "Execute \"hg annotate\" on FILE, inserting the contents in BUFFER. Optional arg REVISION is a revision to annotate from." (vc-hg-command buffer 'async file "annotate" "-d" "-n" "-u" "-c" "-l" "--follow" (when revision (concat "-r" revision))) (lexical-let ((table (make-hash-table :test 'equal))) (set-process-filter (get-buffer-process buffer) (lambda (proc string) (when (process-buffer proc) (with-current-buffer (process-buffer proc) (setq string (concat (process-get proc :vc-left-over) string)) (while (string-match vc-hg-annotate-better-re string) (let* ((author (match-string 1 string)) (rev (match-string 2 string)) (changeset (match-string 3 string)) (date (match-string 4 string)) (key (concat rev author date)) (file (match-string 5 string)) (lineno (match-string 6 string)) (content (match-string 7 string)) (tag (gethash key table)) (inhibit-read-only t)) (setq string (substring string (match-end 0))) (unless tag (setq tag (propertize (format "%-5s %-8.8s" rev author) 'help-echo (format "Revision: %d, author: %s, date: %s" (string-to-number rev) author date) 'mouse-face 'highlight)) (puthash key tag table)) (goto-char (process-mark proc)) (insert tag content) (move-marker (process-mark proc) (point)))) (process-put proc :vc-left-over string)))))))) (eval-after-load "vc-hg" '(defun vc-hg-annotate-time () (save-excursion (beginning-of-line) (when (looking-at vc-hg-annotate-result-re) (let ((prop (get-text-property (line-beginning-position) 'help-echo))) (string-match ", date: \\(.+\\)\\'" prop) (let ((str (match-string-no-properties 1 prop))) (vc-annotate-convert-time (date-to-time str)))))))) (eval-after-load "vc-hg" '(defun vc-hg-annotate-extract-revision-at-line () (save-excursion (beginning-of-line) (when (looking-at vc-hg-annotate-result-re) (match-string-no-properties 1))))) 

Add this to your initialization file and you will get the output format similar to bzr annotate:

 266 jimb@re | /* Window creation, deletion and examination for GNU Emacs. 266 jimb@re | Does not include redisplay. 102971 rgm@gnu | Copyright (C) 1985-1987, 1993-1998, 2000-2011 77438.1.2234 rgm@gnu | Free Software Foundation, Inc. 266 jimb@re | 266 jimb@re | This file is part of GNU Emacs. 

Unfortunately, filtering annotate output like this does slowdown in large files, I haven't found a way around this yet (annotating files in bzr is also slow).

Answer 3

This is allowed in Emacs 25 .

 ;; One line printed by "hg annotate -dq -n -u --follow" looks like this: ;; b56girard 114590 2012-03-13 CLOBBER: Lorem ipsum dolor sit ;; ie AUTHOR REVISION DATE FILENAME: CONTENTS ;; The user can omit options "-u" and/or "--follow". Then it'll look like: ;; 114590 2012-03-13 CLOBBER: ;; or ;; b56girard 114590 2012-03-13: