From: Rogan Dawes <discard@dawes.za.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:58:31 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Show binary file size change in diff --stat
Message-ID: <45E5D0D7.5070305@dawes.za.net>
In-Reply-To: <200702281303.11951.andyparkins@gmail.com>

Andy Parkins wrote:
> Previously, a binary file in the diffstat would show as:
> 
>  some-binary-file.bin       |  Bin
> 
> The space after the "Bin" was never used.  This patch changes binary
> lines in the diffstat to be:
> 
>  some-binary-file.bin       |  Bin +123456B -12345B
> 
> The "+" item is the size of the new version, the "-" item is the size of
> the old version.  If a size is 0 it's not shown (although it would
> probably be better to treat no-file differently from zero-byte-file).
> 
> The "B" (for bytes) is shown to highlight the fact that these numbers
> are not "number of lines", but actual bytes.
> 
> The user can see what changed in the binary file, and how big the new
> file is.  This is in keeping with the information in the rest of the
> diffstat.
> 
> The diffstat_t members "added" and "deleted" were unused when the file
> was binary, so this patch loads them with the file sizes in
> builtin_diffstat().  These figures are then read in show_stats() when
> the file is marked binary.

How about showing the size of the changes between the 2 files via the 
libxdiff binary patch function?

It would probably not be that difficult to generate a binary patch, and 
then derive some stats from it.

Rogan