Re: [PATCH 2/2] diff: teach diff to read gitattribute diff-algorithm

From: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 15, 2023, 14:47 UTC
Message-ID: <159f09b1-8a69-f662-637d-8e883c31d0ec@dunelm.org.uk>
In-Reply-To: <230207.86sffh2xcu.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>

Hi Ævar

On 07/02/2023 17:27, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

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> 
> On Tue, Feb 07 2023, Phillip Wood wrote:
> 
>> This is slightly off topic but one thing I'd really like is a way to
>> tell diff use automatically use --diff-words on some files
>> (e.g. Documentation/*)
> 
> Unlike changing the algorithm, -U options, diff.orderFile etc. doing
> that would give you a diff that can't be applied with "git apply" or
> other tools that expect a valid unified diff.

That's a good point, we'd probably would want to guard it by checking if the output is going to a tty.

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> So I can imagine that it would be neat in some contexts, but such a
> change would have much wider implications than options that tweak how a
> valid unified diff looks, or is generated.
> 
> We'd need some way to mark a diff as "for ad-hoc viewing only".
> 
> But as it sounds like you want this for git.git the
> Documentation/doc-diff script is much better than anything word-diff
> could spew out, as it diffs the resulting generated docs.

It's true that I should look at the doc-diff script for git, but it is a wider wish for text files in other projects as well.

Best Wishes

Phillip

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> I wonder (but haven't tried) whether you can't "diff" that using the
> same method that can be used to diff binary files using a custom driver.
> 
> Hrm, except that in that case (with includes etc) there isn't really a
> 1=1 mapping between files within Documentation/ and generated docs (due
> to includes etc.). But I suppose it could be used only for those files
> that 1=1 correspond to the generated manpages.