get_short_sha1: make default disambiguation configurable

When we find ambiguous short sha1s, we may get a
disambiguation rule from our caller's context. But if we
don't, we fall back to treating all sha1s the same, even
though most projects will tend to refer only to commits by
their short sha1s.

This patch introduces a configuration option that lets the
user pick a different fallback (e.g., only commits). It's
possible that we may want to make this the default, but it's
a good idea to start as a config option for two reasons:

  1. It lets people experiment with this and see if it's a
     good idea (i.e., the "tend to" above is an assumption;
     we don't really know if this will break some obscure
     cases).

  2. Even if we do flip the default, it gives people an
     escape hatch if it causes problems (you can sometimes
     override it by asking for "1234^{tree}", but not all
     combinations are possible).

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/cache.h b/cache.h
index 7bd78ca28..f346c0170 100644
--- a/cache.h
+++ b/cache.h
@@ -1222,6 +1222,8 @@ extern int get_oid(const char *str, struct object_id *oid);
 typedef int each_abbrev_fn(const unsigned char *sha1, void *);
 extern int for_each_abbrev(const char *prefix, each_abbrev_fn, void *);
 
+extern int set_disambiguate_hint_config(const char *var, const char *value);
+
 /*
  * Try to read a SHA1 in hexadecimal format from the 40 characters
  * starting at hex.  Write the 20-byte result to sha1 in binary form.