Re: git with custom diff for commits

From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 18, 2007, 23:52 UTC
Message-ID: <46a038f90712181552i46ecb1aof55c7cdfe0f5c079@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0712182246230.23902@racer.site>

On Dec 19, 2007 11:48 AM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

> Yes.  Changes, as in "take this _file_ instead".  Not "edit this file,
> remove those lines, add these here, etc.".

Exactly. GIT is a "content tracker" that doesn't care about any semantic meaning in your files. Here's the file, git will store it, as is. No conversions, not fancy interpretations. Strict, safe and fast. (There's a small exception there for DOS-style newlines, which was much resisted.)

You can add external machinery that is aware of your content semantics -- as you've done with calling GNU diff with ignore patterns to decide whether to commit or not. But when you tell GIT to commit something, there's no guessing or transformation involved.

A lot of what GIT achieves is based on that founding principle. Remove it, and we're toast. For starters, the internal machinery is based on SHA1 digests that change if you flip a single byte. That's what makes git fast and realiable. It's not merely an end-user thing.

cheers,