From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:47:59 GMT
Subject: Re: textconv not invoked when viewing merge commit
Message-ID: <20110416014758.GB23306@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <7v7havckgg.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 01:45:35PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:
> 
> >> I can't think of a case where it matters, though, so maybe it is just
> >> paranoia.
> >
> > A line-counting, statistics tool would think that 1 line has been
> > removed from both branches, and one new added by the merge.
> >
> > Well, I know no tool parsing combined diff actually, so it's indeed a
> > hypothetical case.
> 
> And the ones that have been parsing cdiff wouldn't have done anything good
> before this change on such a binary blob anyway, no?

No, but we can view the proposed change as fixing a bug for such a tool
Whereas turning it into:

  --Binary blob XXX
  + Binary blob YYY
   +Binary blob ZZZ

is codifying ambiguous output, and making the tool forever broken.

-Peff