`let g:fugitive_summary_format = "%<(16,trunc)%an || %s"`
Vim-Fugitive is a great package. Recently I started to use :Glog command a lot to look at range of changes added to a branch after git pull.
:Glog <hash>..<another hash>
By default the command only shows a commit hash and its subject.
I really wanted to see how can I show a commit author name as well.
`:h fugitive` didn't help much.
Inspecting the fugitive's source code I came across not documented `g:fugitive_summary_format` variable. Initially it wasn't clear how to use it what values I can assign to it but then I noticed that it is assigned with values like `%s` or `%h %P\t%H`.
These things looks familiar. `man git-log` - the place those control symbols can be found at. Searching by "author" gives us `%an` that we can use.
Let's do `let g:fugitive_summary_format = "%an"` and see how does it look.
Nice... no commit message. By searching in `man git-log` I found `%s` which is a subject (first top line) part of a commit message.
Let's do `let g:fugitive_summary_format = "%an\t%s"` (separate name and subject with a tab symbol)
Better but subject is not vertically aligned so let's keep reading `man git-log`.
There is a subject **Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders** where you can find this scary expression - `%<(<N>[,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc])` The definition of this scary thing is - **make the next placeholder take at least N columns, padding spaces on the right if necessary**.
Exactly what we need. Let's try to use it:
`let g:fugitive_summary_format = "%<(16,trunc)%an || %s"` - here I assume 16 chars in user name is enough for me to recognize an author. Adding || too as a separator between author and subject.
Much better!