From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:28:38 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] add boolean diff.suppress-blank-empty config option
Message-ID: <7v4p5mb0a1.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <87k5eiphro.fsf@rho.meyering.net>

Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net> writes:

> GNU diff's --suppress-blank-empty option makes it so that diff does not
> add a space or tab before each empty output line of context.  With this
> option, empty context lines are empty also in "git diff" output.

AFAIK, ERN 103/120 inspired by your comment merely says an empty context
is either an empty line or a line with a single space on it and does not
deprecate the latter, more traditional, form (I do not know the current
status of the update to the POSIX --- what's the recommended way to find
it out by outsiders?)

We've hacked the patch application side to accomodate this special case to
grok output from recent GNU diff already.  Can't we just stop at that,
without having to do the same for generation side?  What's the downside of
not doing so?