Re: [PATCH] Add --show-touched option to show "diff --git" line when contents are unchanged

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 3, 2007, 21:50 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1wekmgo8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <vpqps24i9sx.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> writes:

> Also, is there any particular reason not to update the index stat
> information when files are found to be identical?

Very much --- diff is a read-only operation.

"git-status $args" on the other hand is a preview of "what would happen if I say 'git-commit $args'", and in order to compute that, you would fundamentally need to be able to write into the object store. In a special case of giving empty $args it can be read-only. The commit Dscho quoted earlier was to hack that around so that "git-status" can pretend to be a read-only operation in a repository you do not have write permission to.

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