Re: diff settings

From: Ted Pavlic <ted@tedpavlic.com>
Date: Jan 26, 2009, 02:06 UTC
Message-ID: <497D1AB7.7000208@tedpavlic.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.GSO.2.00.0901251307030.12651@kiwi.cs.ucla.edu>

Show 8 quoted lines

>> Mercurial has a "defaults.*" that does exactly what you want. That is, you can
>> [defaults]
>> diff = -w
>> and "hg diff" will automatically do "hg diff -w". Such a feature might be a
>> nice addition to git.
> Thank you, that is very interesting.  I just submitted a patch this morning that
> does exactly what you describe, but I called it "primer" instead of "defaults"
> because it seemed more explicit.  Check it out.

I saw that. However, in Mercurial's case, the [defaults] section applies to all commands (including new ones introduced by extensions). That is, it looks like your patch adds a diff.primer, but Mercurial would add a primer.* that allows you to have a primer.diff, primer.commit, etc.

For example, wouldn't it be nice to have something like...

[defaults] diff = -w commit = -a

etc.? Right now the only way you can do that is with aliases (e.g., I have an alias from "ci" to "commit -a").

This task is pretty easy in Mercurial because Mercurial porcelains are implemented as modules that are all executed through the central "hg" command. This isn't the case with git.

(on a somewhat unrelated note, Mercurial does have a [diff] section that allows for, say, forcing the use of git diff and other things)

--Ted

-- 
Ted Pavlic <ted@tedpavlic.com>

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