Re: bug/feature request: apply textconv in "git add -p" diff output

From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Jun 20, 2009, 09:41 UTC
Message-ID: <4A3CAEBB.9030107@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <fcaeb9bf0906200017x6cc63c29q5515c11c202e424e@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy venit, vidit, dixit 20.06.2009 09:17:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hi,
> 
> I use git to manage bdf font files. It it quite cryptic so textconv
> for diff output makes it much easier to keep track of changes. The
> only problem is that "git add -p" does not seems to use textconv, so I
> have to run in parallel "git diff" and "git add -p", then add chunks
> accordingly. Can somebody add textconv support to "git add -p" please?
> I'm not so good at Perl to do the job.

I don't think this is possible: textconv filters are meant to produce easily readable output from diff, but in no way are they required to be injective mappings. So, textconv output cannot to be used in order to specify a patch uniquely.

The appropriate approach is to use smudge/clean filters. They are mutually inverse. And, in fact, I just checked: add -p uses the cleaned version. So, if clean converts to "something textual" which gives you readable diffs and meaningful stats (and smudge converts to binary bdf) then that is the way to go.

Michael