Re: About git reporting missing newline for symlinks

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 13, 2022, 19:33 UTC
Message-ID: <221013.8635brldj4.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqtu47fti9.fsf@gitster.g>

On Thu, Oct 13 2022, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>> 	\ The filename pointed to by the symlink does not end in a newline
>>>
>>> While I do not think it would break anybody, I doubt it would give
>>> us much value.  One line above that output is a line that any user,
>>> who is vaguely familiar with the contents being compared, can
>>> recognize as giving a pathname, the contents of the symbolic link.
>>
>> Clearly it confused the initial reporter upthread :)
>
> But to such a user, I highly suspect that the rephased message above
> still looks like a warning, and will result in the same reaction.
>
> IOW, you want to explain why "does not end in a newline" is worth
> expressing in the output.  Saying "does not end in a newline" alone
> would tell the user what they already know (i.e. the symlink stores
> the target filename without an extra LF at the end).

Yes, but isn't the point of the report/confusion that we're inserting what looks like the warning you get when you forget a \n at the end of a source file, so a user might wonder why they're seeing it at all.

Whereas what we're *really* doing there is not really about that at all, but just inserting a bit of magic so that the diff format & its consumers grok that this line we're inserting there isn't supposed to have a \n, as we're working with a filename.

Maybe e.g.:
	
	diff --git a/RelNotes b/RelNotes
	index d505db645be..758368388a4 120000
	--- a/RelNotes
	+++ b/RelNotes
	@@ -1 +1 @@
	-Documentation/RelNotes/2.38.0.txt
	\ No newline at end of file
	+Documentation/RelNotes/2.39.0.txt
	\ No newline at end of file

Would, for those users, be less confusing as:

	diff --git a/RelNotes b/RelNotes
	index d505db645be..758368388a4 120000
	--- a/RelNotes
	+++ b/RelNotes
	@@ -1 +1 @@
	-Documentation/RelNotes/2.38.0.txt
	\ The symlink above has no trailing NL in its filename
	+Documentation/RelNotes/2.39.0.txt
	\ The symlink above has no trailing NL in its filename

*dunno* :)