Re: difftool -d symlinks, under what conditions

From: John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>
Date: Mar 13, 2013, 00:17 UTC
Message-ID: <20130313001758.GH2317@serenity.lan>
In-Reply-To: <3222724986386016520@unknownmsgid>

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 04:48:16PM -0600, Matt McClure wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> On Mar 12, 2013, at 4:16 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> > Matt McClure <matthewlmcclure@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > * If you are comparing two trees, and especially if your RHS is not
> >   HEAD, you will send everything to a temporary without
> >   symlinks. Any edit made by the user will be lost.
> 
> I think you're suggesting to use a symlink any time the content of any
> given RHS revision is the same as the working tree.
> 
> I imagine that might confuse me as a user. It would create
> circumstances where some files are symlinked and others aren't for
> reasons that won't be straightforward.
> 
> I imagine solving that case, I might instead implement a copy back to
> the working tree with conflict detection/resolution. Some earlier
> iterations of the directory diff feature used copy back without
> conflict detection and created situations where I clobbered my own
> changes by finishing a directory diff after making edits concurrently.

The code to copy back working tree files is already there, it just triggers using the same logic as the creation of symlinks in the first place and doesn't attempt any conflict detection. I suspect that any more comprehensive solution will need to restrict the use of "git difftool -d" whenever the index contains unmerged entries or when there are both staged and unstaged changes, since the merge resolution will cause these states to be lost.

The implementation of Junio's suggestion is relatively straightforward (this is untested, although t7800 passes, and can probably be improved by someone better versed in Perl). Does this work for your original scenario?

-- >8 --

diff --git a/git-difftool.perl b/git-difftool.perl
index 0a90de4..5f093ae 100755
--- a/git-difftool.perl
+++ b/git-difftool.perl
@@ -83,6 +83,21 @@ sub exit_cleanup
 	exit($status | ($status >> 8));
 }
 
+sub use_wt_file
+{
+	my ($repo, $workdir, $file, $sha1, $symlinks) = @_;
+	my $null_sha1 = '0' x 40;
+
+	if ($sha1 eq $null_sha1) {
+		return 1;
+	} elsif (not $symlinks) {
+		return 0;
+	}
+
+	my $wt_sha1 = $repo->command_oneline('hash-object', "$workdir/$file");
+	return $sha1 eq $wt_sha1;
+}
+
 sub setup_dir_diff
 {
 	my ($repo, $workdir, $symlinks) = @_;
@@ -159,10 +174,10 @@ EOF
 		}
 
 		if ($rmode ne $null_mode) {
-			if ($rsha1 ne $null_sha1) {
-				$rindex .= "$rmode $rsha1\t$dst_path\0";
-			} else {
+			if (use_wt_file($repo, $workdir, $dst_path, $rsha1, $symlinks)) {
 				push(@working_tree, $dst_path);
+			} else {
+				$rindex .= "$rmode $rsha1\t$dst_path\0";
 			}
 		}
 	}

-- 
1.8.2.rc2.4.g7799588