From: Dana How <danahow@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 08:45:17 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Support ent:relative_path
Message-ID: <56b7f5510705040145k781da6farff3d02c3c1a5f3f9@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v7irpuhhr.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On 5/4/07, Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> wrote:
> I do not think it is wrong per-se, to want to make this hold true:
>
>         A=$(git rev-parse :somedir/file)
>         B=$(cd somedir && git rev-parse :file)
>         test "$A" = "$B"
>
> One thing I am reasonably certain however is that this should
> NOT be conditional to a config setting.  Doing so would force
> scripts that take (or compute) path and commit and concatenate
> them to make "${commit}:${path}" to name a blob (or tree) to
> first inspect the current setting of core.relativepaths and undo
> what the new code does by prefixing/subtracting the prefix
> string depending on the config.
>
> In other words, having that config is not really helping scripts
> or compatibility.
>
> I think the choices are:
>
>  (1) we say it was a mistake that we did not make it relative to
>      the current directory when we introduced the X:<path>
>      syntax (X could be empty or :[0-3]: for index, or a commit
>      or tree object name), and change the semantics in a future
>      major release for everybody, apologizing for potentially
>      breaking existing scripts; or
>
>  (2) keep the current behaviour as is, and come up with a
>      different syntax to use relative; or
>
>  (3) do nothing.
>
> My preference is (2), (3) and then (1), but I do not have
> offhand a suggestion for a good metacharacter we could use.

Let us require:
* No config settings as you prefer
* Current interpretations are unchanged.

The current path supports
  :fullpath
  :/string
  :./relpath
[assuming core.relativepaths=no always since it goes away].
(:/string is the "find string in commit msg" feature.)

A new metacharacter lets us drop the "./" ,
and I think that's desirable.
How about = ? It's not even shifted on my keyboard:
 ent=relpath
 ent=2=relpath
 ent=/fullpath

1. We would accept the same new metacharacter before stage if any.
2, You could still use ent:/string , or ent:fullpath .

The patch should also be extended so relpath can start
with a sequence of ./ or ../ prefixes,
which is easily handled in prepend_prefix()..

What do you think of "=" ?
-- 
Dana L. How  danahow@gmail.com  +1 650 804 5991 cell