Re: [PATCH 1/4] diff/xdiff: refactor EOF-EOL detection

From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Jun 6, 2010, 09:01 UTC
Message-ID: <201006061101.02156.j6t@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vfx10yfmn.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sonntag, 6. Juni 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:

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> Symlinks are minority among the tracked contents (e.g. in git.git there is
> only one), and they are almost always a single incomplete line.  When they
> change, you do want to notice, and I happen to find it a good visual aid
> to have these incomplete line indicators, in addition to the unusual
> 120000 mode on the index line.

You make whole lot of assumptions, don't you?

A repository cannot have many tracked symlinks? They change infrequently? Additional clues are needed to notice that they change?

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> Peff uses --textconv to show changes to the exif information on his photo
> collections.  If he has any symlinks, and if he finds that removal of "\No
> newline" is a regression and not an improvement, what recourse does your
> patch give him?  Saying --no-textconv to work around that regression is
> not a solution, isn't it?

Oh, I'm pretty sure that Peff wouldn't use --textconv on his repository if he cared that diffs contained complete reproducible information.

> If you start from a false premise that "\No newline" was an unnecessary
> warning,

That's a strawman. Michael never meant it that way although he said it (unfortunately).

For me, the 120000 mode is visual clue enough (and a very strong visual trigger, BTW) when I browse through a diff. It's appropriate that "\No newline" is suppressed for symbolic links so that it does not distract from the mode line, because "\No newline" is a much strong trigger (that makes alarm bells ring).

-- Hannes