Re: [PATCH/alternative/raw and rough] setup.c: denote repo wide pathspecs by ':'

From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Mar 1, 2011, 15:01 UTC
Message-ID: <4D6D0A51.9030701@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vsjv6evy4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 01.03.2011 15:50:

Show 40 quoted lines

> Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> No. ':foo' as a reference to 'foo' in index is a SHA1-extended syntax
>> and I think we try to avoid ambiguation when a sha1-extended syntax
>> may look like a path or vice versa.
> 
> Very true.
> 
> Just as a thought experiment (I am skeptical about this whole "this is
> from root" prefix idea to begin with, but I don't want to shoot an idea
> down prematurely when there may still be untold gems I haven't seen in
> it):
> 
>     $ git grep -e frotz .../
> 
> to abbreviate "I don't bother to count my ../" might be an alternative,
> though.
> 
> The reason I am skeptical about the "from root prefix" is because I do not
> see a way to make it compatible with other meaningful pathspecs.
> 
>     $ cd Documentation
>     $ git grep -e frotz '*.txt'
> 
> would find frotz in all *.txt files in Documentation (and its
> subdirectories), if the command takes "relatigve to cwd".
> 
> It also is very clear that
> 
>     $ cd Documentation
>     $ git grep --full-tree -e frotz '*.txt'
> 
> would find those anywhere, inside or outside Documentation.
> 
> On the other hand, it is natural to expect that
> 
>     $ git grep -e frotz ".../*.txt"
> 
> should find *.txt files _only_ at the root level, so it is not as useful as
> the --full-tree (or --root).

Exactly that is (one of the reasons) why I used something which does not look like "as many ../ as necessary" nor like "/". With my implementation,

git grep -e frotz ":*.txt"

from a subdir will grep the exact same files as

(cd $(git rev-parse --cdup) && git grep -e frotz "*.txt")

will (it is --full-tree!), and will output the results relative to the current workdir.

Note that we already have to disambiguate between revspecs and pathspecs with -- in several places; that is not different with the new notation, and even not more frequent if it is not used.

I have to say I'm really excited about how transparently this works across all kinds of commands, and how suggestive this is with rev:path in mind.

Also, e.g.,

git grep -e frotz "*.c" ":*.h"

will look in all C files in the cwd and and all headers everywhere. Just think of the possibilities, and of the usefulness with clean, add, commit, reset,...!

Michael