Re: git-diff on touched files: bug or feature?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 2, 2007, 10:01 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1wemxnkk.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vd4y6xnw4.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> writes:
> ...
>> I've hit this while working on a project, doing a lot of modifications
>> through scripting (some regexp substitutions and such kinds of
>> things).
>
> I have to say that you are quite mistaken.
>
> Scripted style bulk modification that indiscriminately touch
> everbody but actually only modifies some, e.g. "perl -p -i", is
> a fine component of people's workflow, but that is *NOT* the
> norm.

Having said that, there is another lesson to take home from this.

Quite honestly, a script that indiscriminately touches everybody but only modifies a few is simply broken. Think about "make". "git diff" reporting many cache-dirty files is simply reminding you the brokenness of such a script.