From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:44:42 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC] git-format-patch options
Message-ID: <4381F97A.9010105@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <20051121162540.4722.qmail@web31812.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Luben Tuikov wrote:
> It is often the case that "since <mine> head forked from
> <his> head" (quoting the manual page of git-format-patch),
> for various projects, some patches have been accepted and
> some have not.
> 
> I was wondering about the value of
> 
>   git-format-patch <commit-ish>
> 
> to output/prepare a diff patch between the indicated commit
> and its parent.  As opposed to the current behaviour giving
> all changes between the indicated commit and HEAD.
> 
> So in effect the form above would become the trivial:
> 
>   git-format-patch <commit-ish>..HEAD
> 
> and
> 
>   git-format-patch <commit-ish>
> 
> would give the diff patch between the indicated commit and
> its parent.
> 

Please don't. git-format-patch is generally used to send in a series of 
patches ranging back from HEAD, so this would mean less userfriendliness 
in the most usual case.

Here's the "sed -n 90,100p" commentary from git-format-patch:
----%<-----%<----
# Backward compatible argument parsing hack.
#
# Historically, we supported:
# 1. "rev1"     is equivalent to "rev1..HEAD"
# 2. "rev1..rev2"
# 3. "rev1" "rev2   is equivalent to "rev1..rev2"
#
# We want to take a sequence of "rev1..rev2" in general.
# Also, "rev1.." should mean "rev1..HEAD"; git-diff users are
# familiar with that syntax.
----%<-----%<----

Perhaps the man-page needs to be updated with this info.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231