Re: [PATCH] Resurrect diff-tree-helper -R

LT> Talking about the diffs, I'm beginning to hate those "mode" things.

Likewise.

LT> Not only do they screw up diffstat (big deal), but they are pointless, LT> since 99.9% of the time the mode stays the same.

Pointless, yes. mode is not what screwing up diffstat but comparing against /dev/null is, so it is not a reason to hate mode, and my fingers learned to say diffstat -p1 already so it is not a big deal anymore.

LT> Normal "patch" will just ignore the extra lines before the LT> diff anyway, so it won't matter there.

LT> Comments?

I am 100% in agreement with you here. The only reason I added it was to match what Pasky does so that his cg-patch can eat its output. To me, pleasing cg-patch is far lower priority than pleasing l-k developers, so your veto counts.

My JIT tools do not use that mode thing in the patch. I apply a patch between two commits (or trees) to the work tree by doing something like this:

    GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=jit-diff-extract \
    jit-diff "$@" | {
        cd "${GIT_PROJECT_TOP}"
        sh
    }

Here jit-diff-extract is the gem that creates a small shell script that patches the file and runs "chmod +x" or "chmod -x" when necessary, and does git-update-cache for added or removed files. Its output would look something like this:

    patch -p1 <<\EOF
    --- /dev/null
    +++ fs/ext9/Makefile
    @@ ....
    EOF
    chmod -x 'fs/ext9/Makefile'
    git-update-cache --add --remove -- 'fs/ext9/Makefile'

Maybe I can make the default diff output just like the above? As you say, normal patch would not look at those shell script part at all anyway.