Re: [PATCH 2/2] Allow passing pipes for input pipes to diff --no-index

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > Getting back to the overall feature, this is definitely something that
> > has come up before. The last I know of is:
> >
> >   https://lore.kernel.org/git/20181220002610.43832-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net/
> >
> > which everybody seemed to like the direction of; I suspect the original
> > author (cc'd) just never got around to it again. Compared to this
> > approach, it uses a command-line option to avoid dereferencing symlinks.
> > That puts an extra burden on the caller to pass the option, but it's way
> > less magical; you could drop all of the "does this look like a symlink
> > to a pipe" heuristics. It would also be much easier to test. ;)
> 
> Yes, I do remember liking the approach very much and wanted to take
> it once the "do not dereference symlinks everywhere---just limit it
> to what was given from the command line" was done.
> 
> To be quite honest, I think "git diff --no-index A B" should
> unconditionally dereference A and/or B if they are symlinks, whether
> they are symlinks to pipes, regular files or directories, and
> otherwise treat symlinks in A and B the same way as "git diff" if A
> and B are directories.  But that is a design guideline that becomes
> needed only after we start resurrecting Brian's effort, not with
> these patches that started this thread.