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

Now I understand which discussion I was missing ;-).

PB> For humans I'd say "Mode change" instead of "mode" would be better, and PB> for machines I still think "@" would be better than "#". "#" can occur PB> quite naturally in some code snippets or whatever pasted to the commit PB> message, which is extremely unlikely for "@". What are the advantages PB> of "#"?

Wait a minute. Aren't we scanning starting from the first '---\n'? Why does what's in commit message matter?

And it is not really "Mode change" anymore. If you used to have file there and you replaced it with a symlink, that is 100644 to 120000 "mode change". I experimented with different things in where I have "# mode: " there and seriously considered to spell it "# git:" instead, because that is not really mode and it is something that means something special to git. Also I tried to say just "@. " --- it _was_ confusing to human eye, especially if you are used to reading diffs.

What I think is that this should not really matter much for human consumption, because mode change is rare and type change is even more rare.

PB> I like the rest. That's basically what I've imagined, and PB> without the arrows it's even better. :-)

Here is what I'd propose for you to do. (1) Take the patch as is and commit; (2) Change the definition of git_prefix in diff.c to "\n@. " and commit; (3) If you already took the test suite, match t/t2000-diff.sh for the "\n@. " format, and commit.

It will look something like this. thanks to the leading newline, the output becomes a bit less confusing (without that blank line, it really is a disaster for human eyes).

    @. 100644 100755 path0
    --- a/path0
    +++ b/path0
    @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
     Line 1
     Line 2
    -line 3
    +Line 3

    @. 100755 . path1
    --- a/path1
    +++ /dev/null
    @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
    -Line 1
    -Line 2
    -line 3