Re: Dubious format-patch options

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 13, 2008, 03:01 UTC
Message-ID: <7vtzfyxckm.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0806121923400.2949@woody.linux-foundation.org>

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

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Jon Loeliger wrote:
>> 
>>     $ git format-patch -1 --stdout --color master
>> 
>> But I seriously doubt that we _really_ want to send a
>> patch that has the embedded escape sequences in it:
>
> Hey, you asked for it, you got it. I hope you're not complaining.

Well, having said and heard all that, coming back to our more serious selves...

I think being able to do

    $ git -p format-patch --stdout --color -2 HEAD

makes some sense.  Being able to produce an unusable patch by saying

    $ git format-patch --stat old..

at the first glance is of quite dubious value, but even that would make sense as a good input source for "commit log automailer".

I think I know where Jon is coming from and where he wants to go. While I am somewhat sympathetic to the cause of adding some warning or safety valve to prevent nonsense option combinations from being given, I am not sure we can draw a line to classify options into black and white.