Re: [PATCH v3 0/2] check-attr: add support to work with revisions

On Fri, Dec 16 2022, Karthik Nayak wrote:

Could you please set the In-Reply-To header appropriately in the future, so that each version of this series isn't in its own disconnected thread?

I didn't look at the v2, but expected at least the short form to be gone here re https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOLa=ZTSzUh2Ma_EMHHWcDunGyKMaUW9BaG=QdegtMqLd+69Wg@mail.gmail.com/;

I'm still more partial to the alternate suggestion I had in https://lore.kernel.org/git/221207.86lenja0zi.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com/; I'm not sure what you meant in your reply at https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOLa=ZQua8TfApCdzoK06_2fkWb4ZCfWewXKOSaXno1fqFSq2A@mail.gmail.com/ (sorry about not following up at the time) with:

	"when being consistent we need to be fully consistent,
	i.e. <revision>:<path>, tweaking this slightly to be
	<revision>:<attr> is worse than breaking consistency."

Yes, it would, but isn't that by definition the case with any proposal?

We don't have a way to refer to an attribute (or all attributes for -a) for a given revision/path, the task of this series is to invent such a syntax.

So we could invent that as this series currently does with:

	git check-attrs --revision <rev> <attr>... <path>...

Or, as I suggested:

        git check-attr [<rev>:]<attr>... -- <path>...

Or whatever. Here I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but advocating for one on the basis of consistency doesn't make sense to me, this is new syntax.

I think what you mean is that because the log family uses "<rev>:<path>" we should not come up with a syntax that looks anything like "<lhs>:<rhs>"., as the "<lhs>" in the mind of some users is going to be "<rev>", and the "<rhs>" is "<path>", so it would be confusing to have it be "<attr>" here, and have the "<path>..." come after the "--".

I'm not convinced by that. From refspecs to e.g. "git log"'s own "-L" we have little mini-syntaxes in various places that use this sort of colon notation. I find it more elegant than "--revision".

It's fine if you disagree, I'm just trying to understand the basis of the disagreement.