It seems like the default font "Ubuntu" is missing the character "⚷" Which makes smartgit to fallback to the next font "Noto" which has a strange line-height, so all commit lines with that kind of "key" icon are half a line off to the bottom:
We found out that the Noto font is used as replacement for the Ubuntu font with
FC_DEBUG=4 pango-view --font=Ubuntu -t "⚷ testString"
The problem comes from 26b7 being almost twice as high as regular text:
81x17 = GC.stringExtent("X test string")
80x31 = GC.stringExtent("⚷ test string")
The entire font 'Noto Sans Symbols' is bigger then its regular counterpart 'Noto Sans'.
How do I add the missing character to the "Ubuntu" font? Or where do I have to complain about the missing icon?
Note: I have installed the package kubuntu-settings-desktop
which maybe caused Noto to be the fallback font.
Update:
I installed gucharmap
with which I can view all installed fonts search for the CHIRON character (⚷) and it is not there (You need to enable 'View' -> 'Show only glyphs from this font').