From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 22:34:05 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] builtin-apply: check for empty files when detecting creation patch
Message-ID: <7vlk2dsujm.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805131514300.3019@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> Look at CVS-generated patches, or SVN for that matter. The diffs look like 
> this:
>
> 	Index: file
> 	===================================================================
> 	--- file (revision 0)
> 	+++ file (working copy)
> 	@@ -0,0 +1 @@
> 	+test
>
> and there is no /dev/null there.
>
> The thing is, git-apply is careful, and it's very much careful with 
> respect to *knowing* that there are lots of different versions of "diff" 
> floating around, and lots of different SCM systems that generate odd diff 
> headers. We should absolutely NOT start expecting that diffs are only 
> generated with GNU diff.
>
> So non-/dev/null'ness means absolutely nothing. It means "don't know", and 
> we should leave is_new and is_delete as -1.

Ok, then what's the judgement for the original issue?  Is it a user error
to have a tracked absolutely empty file in the index?