From: Matthieu Moy Date: Fri, 12 May 2023 08:15:38 GMT Subject: Re: Can we clarify the purpose of `git diff -s`? Message-ID: <4f713a29-1a34-2f71-ee54-c01020be903a@univ-lyon1.fr> In-Reply-To: <5bb24e0208dd4a8ca5f6697d578f3ae0@SAMBXP02.univ-lyon1.fr> [ I apologize for not being more reactive the last few years. I still love Git and this ml, but I'm struggling to find time to contribute. ] On 5/11/23 19:37, Junio C Hamano wrote: > The behaviour came in the v1.8.4 days with a series that was merged > by e2ecd252 (Merge branch 'mm/diff-no-patch-synonym-to-s', > 2013-07-22), which > > * made "--no-patch" a synonym for "-s"; > > * fixed "-s --patch", in which the effect of "-s" got stuck and did > not allow the patch output to be re-enabled again with "--patch"; > > * updated documentation to explain "--no-patch" as a synonym for > "-s". > > While it is very clear that the intent of the author was to make it > a synonym for "-s" and not a "feature-wise enable/disable" option, > that is what we've run with for the past 10 years. That's too old for me to remember exactly my state of mind, but if you want to do a bit of archeology, the origin is there: https://public-inbox.org/git/51E3DC47.70107@googlemail.com/ Essentially, Stefan Beller was using 'git show --format="%ad"' and expecting it to show only the author date, and for merge commits it also showed the patch (--cc). I suggested -s and noticed that the option wasn't easily discoverable, hence the patch series to better document it and add --no-patch as a synonym. Probably I did not get all the subtleties of the different kinds of outputs. I guess I considered the output of diff to be the one specified by --format plus the patch (not considering --raw, --stat & friends), hence "get only the output specified by --format" and "disable the patch" were synonym to me. Looking more closely, it's rather clear to me they are not, and that git show --raw --patch --no-patch should be equivalent to git show --raw Cheers, -- Matthieu Moy https://matthieu-moy.fr/