[PATCH] correct git-status Porcelain Format documentation

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 6, 2012, 13:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20120506132959.GA28214@sigill.intra.peff.net>

From: Zak Johnson <zakj@nox.cx>

The existing documentation implies that "git status --porcelain" has a branch line while "git status --porcelain -z" does not; in fact, neither includes a branch line.

Signed-off-by: Zak Johnson <zakj@nox.cx>
---
This was forward to me by the original author, who had trouble posting
to the list. So I'm trying it (I didn't see anything from the taboo list
in the patch, but we'll see...).

The patch itself looks obviously correct and describes the current behavior. But I have to wonder: the --short format will also not produce the branch line unless you provide "-b". So why is it that the porcelain format does not respect "-b", since anybody who asked for it would obviously be expecting to find and parse it?

Should this bit of documentation be dropped in favor of just making "-b" work properly?

 Documentation/git-status.txt | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-status.txt b/Documentation/git-status.txt
index 2883a28..3e12020 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-status.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-status.txt
@@ -176,6 +176,8 @@ format, with a few exceptions:
 2. The user's status.relativePaths configuration is not respected; paths
    shown will always be relative to the repository root.
 
+3. There is no branch line.
+
 There is also an alternate -z format recommended for machine parsing. In
 that format, the status field is the same, but some other things
 change.  First, the '\->' is omitted from rename entries and the field
@@ -184,7 +186,7 @@ order is reversed (e.g 'from \-> to' becomes 'to from'). Second, a NUL
 and the terminating newline (but a space still separates the status
 field from the first filename).  Third, filenames containing special
 characters are not specially formatted; no quoting or
-backslash-escaping is performed. Fourth, there is no branch line.
+backslash-escaping is performed.
 
 CONFIGURATION
 -------------

-- 
1.7.10.1.14.gb97aca1