Re: [PATCH 0/3] Teach Git about the patience diff algorithm

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 2, 2009, 20:52 UTC
Message-ID: <20090102205208.GA9273@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090102195053.GA10876@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 02:50:53PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> For example, f83b9ba209's commit message indicates that it moves the
> "--format-patch" paragraph. Which is what "git diff" shows. Patience
> diff shows it as moving other text _around_ that paragraph.

Here's another interesting one: d592b315. The commit removes dashes from git commands in test scripts. Git says:

        echo "tag-one-line" >expect &&
-       git-tag -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
+       git tag -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
        test_cmp expect actual &&
-       git-tag -n0 -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
+       git tag -n0 -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
        test_cmp expect actual &&
-       git-tag -n0 -l tag-one-line >actual &&
+       git tag -n0 -l tag-one-line >actual &&
        test_cmp expect actual &&

whereas patience says:

        echo "tag-one-line" >expect &&
-       git-tag -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
-       test_cmp expect actual &&
-       git-tag -n0 -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
-       test_cmp expect actual &&
-       git-tag -n0 -l tag-one-line >actual &&
+       git tag -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
+       test_cmp expect actual &&
+       git tag -n0 -l | grep "^tag-one-line" >actual &&
+       test_cmp expect actual &&
+       git tag -n0 -l tag-one-line >actual &&
        test_cmp expect actual &&

which is exactly what patience is advertised to do: it's treating the non-unique lines as uninteresting markers. But in this case they _are_ interesting, and I think the git output is more readable. And this is a case where your "weight lines by length instead of uniqueness" suggestion would perform better, I think.

-Peff