Re: [PATCH v5] gitk: Use git-difftool for external diffs when git >= 1.7.0

> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 02:08:10AM -0700, David Aguilar wrote:
> 
> > git-difftool is used instead of the built-in external diff
> > code when git is >= 1.7.0.  git-difftool's '--extcmd=frotz'
> > feature was first introduced in 1.7.0 and is the mechanism
> > through which we launch the configured difftool.
> > 
> > A benefit of this change is that gitk's external diff feature
> > no longer needs write-access to the current directory.
> 
> I applied this one, and in testing it I noticed that if the git
> difftool invocation fails, for example because the user doesn't have
> meld installed, there is no notification via the GUI.  Instead an
> error message is printed to stderr.  We need to do something more like
> what we do in the old-git case -- use open rather than exec -- and pop
> up an error dialog with error_popup on error so that the user knows
> what the problem is.
> 
> Another minor problem is that the file names that meld (or other diff
> tool) displays are less informative now.  For example I see
> "KyaZ5d_gitk : 8iucke_gitk" as the tab label in meld instead of the
> "[87d24ec87abc...e236e0833ff] gitk" label that we got before, which
> was a little more informative, though the e236e0833ff is the end of
> the second SHA1 rather than the beginning.
> 
> So I backed it out.  The error handling needs to be fixed using
> something like what delete_at_eof does (except that obviously we don't
> have any files to delete).
> 
> Paul.