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

Another possibility. How about generating the following _only_ when mode changes (including create and delete), even for human consumption? There will be _no_ such line when mode or type does not change.

# mode: 100644 100755 path/to/a/file/that/changed/mode # mode: 100644 120000 path/to/a/file/that/changed/to/symlink # mode: 100644 100644 path/to/a/file/with/no/mode/change # mode: . 100644 path/to/a/new/file # mode: 100644 . path/to/a/deleted/file

This is not "something like this", but a proposal for the exact output format specification (I am going to code immediately). Each token above is separated with exactly one ' ' (ASCII 0x20) each, and such a line comes immediately before the patch for the file. Showing both mode bits is to prepare for the case you would want to apply the patch in reverse.

This is for machine consumption and there is no need to force them to parse out -> and (), so I dropped them. And mode or type change happens so rarely, it would be OK for human consumption if we show these garbage (from human point of view) only when things change. Can you parse this, or do you always want to have them even if nothing changes?

Let's see how this would look like to humans.

    # mode: 100644 100755 path0
    --- a/path0
    +++ b/path0
    @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
     Line 1
     Line 2
    -line 3
    +Line 3
    # mode: 100644 . path1
    --- a/path1
    +++ /dev/null
    @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
    -Line 1
    -Line 2
    -line 3
    --- a/path2
    +++ b/path2
    @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
     Line 1
     Line 2
    -line 3
    +Line 3
    # mode: . 100755 t/t2000-diff.sh
    --- /dev/null
    +++ b/t/t2000-diff.sh
    @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
    ...

Doesn't look too bad, does it?