Re: [PATCH 2/4] Teach git-add--interactive to accept a file path to patch

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 22, 2007, 11:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20071122112406.GA12913@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <887C3CB1-D21B-4143-8D4E-BF37709FA102@wincent.com>

On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 11:44:54AM +0100, Wincent Colaiuta wrote:

> So I don't think the proposal to add "-p" (jump to "patch" subcommand) and 
> "-a" (jump to "add untracked" subcommand) are a very good idea, seeing as we 
> already have builtin-add for adding entire files.

I agree that "git-add -i untracked_file" is a bit useless. I think it might be more useful if you could split the one giant hunk (which git-add--interactive does not currently allow) into smaller hunks, and then just add parts of them (so conceptually treat it like it had been a tracked file with empty contents, and go to the patch menu). Of course, there is currently no way to usefully split a hunk that has consecutive added lines, so that would have to be figured out, too.

So I think it is not so much "this other thing is useful right now" as "do we want to paint ourselves in a corner for making it (or other things) useful later on?" And assuming that having arguments means "start the patch menu on these files" doesn't leave room for changes later.

-Peff