bzr missing should support more bzr log options

[Wesley J. Landaker]

The "bzr missing" command already supports many of the same options as "bzr log", which makes a lot of sense as their output formats are almost identical.

It obviously does not make sense to have "bzr missing" take *all* of the options that "bzr log" does, since they do different things. But "bzr missing" ought to at least support all of the "bzr log" options that affect output format.

For instance, the "-p, --show-diff" option was recently added to "bzr log". This would be INCREDIBLY USEFUL to have in "bzr missing". Other output-format-affecting options that bzr log has but bzr missing does not:

-p, --show-diff : this would be even more useful with bzr missing than it is with bzr log.
-n N, --levels=N : this would be useful when doing bzr missing against e.g. bzr.dev [1]
--forward : this is useful for the same reason it's useful with bzr log
--timezone=ARG : if you can do this with bzr log, why not with bzr missing?!
-m ARG, --message=ARG : useful with bzr missing for the same reason you use it with bzr log
-l N, --limit=N : you can already filter with -r, but why can't you use -l like you can with log? [1]
--show-ids : I don't ever use this with bzr log, but it's a format that bzr log supports, so bzr missing should do it

[1] This might imply there should also be a --my-levels and --my-limit, since there is already a --my-revision to go along with -r.

[Ian Clatworthy (ian-clatworthy)]

I certainly agree w.r.t. the display options: --show-diff, --levels, --forward, --timezone, etc.

I'm less convinced about the filtering options like --limit and --message, given that the whole point of the command is to intelligently filter and show the missing revisions. (Marius had an explicit use case for adding -r and --my-revision and my preference would be to wait for an explicit need before adding more filtering options.)

Technically, the log code needs to make it easier for the missing code to reuse it. I'm making progress on that issue while addressing logging of multiple files/directories.

[Matthew Fuller (fullermd)]

Missing already has --forward. It's just called --reverse, for simplicity.

[Wesley J. Landaker (wjl)]

As far as an explicit use case for -l, I was very happy to have -r added so I could do "-r -10..-1" all the time, when really I want to use -l 10. Before there was -r on missing, I used "bzr missing | head -50" or things like that.

I don't use -m even with log very much personally, but part of that was that I didn't know it existed until I was collecting info to write this bug. ;) In general, it just seems like a powerful "bzr missing | grep ..." which seems useful to me (e.g. "bzr missing -m 'bug #\d+'")

@fullermd: I *really* hope you are being funny... having --forward == --reverse sounds like a git UI. ;)