Re: [PATCH 1/2] gitattributes: Clarify discussion of attribute macros

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 3, 2011, 19:46 UTC
Message-ID: <20110803194632.GB23848@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1312378890-31703-2-git-send-email-mhagger@alum.mit.edu>

On Wed, Aug 03, 2011 at 03:41:29PM +0200, Michael Haggerty wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> -which is equivalent to the above.  Note that the attribute macros can only
> -be "Set" (see the above example that sets "binary" macro as if it were an
> -ordinary attribute --- setting it in turn unsets "text" and "diff").
> +Setting the "binary" attribute also unsets the "text" and "diff"
> +attributes as above.  Note that attribute macros can only be "Set",
> +though setting one might have the effect of setting or unsetting other
> +attributes or even returning other attributes to the "Unspecified"
> +state.

This is slightly confusing. You can "unset" an attribute macro, and it will be reported as "unset". Which seems to contradict what is written above (although the error comes from the previous text). I think there are two possibilities for what a user might expect unsetting a macro to do for the sub-attributes:

  1. Leave them unspecified.

  2. Negate them (i.e., "-binary" means "text diff".

and we do (1).

I don't know if that was intentional, or if the behavior is simply accidental and the original code was simply never meant to have "-binary" called at all.

-Peff