Re: [PATCH 2/3] tutorial: expanded discussion of commit history

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: May 22, 2006, 08:45 UTC
Message-ID: <7vzmhacuso.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <e4rsef$v34$1@sea.gmane.org>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

> J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>
>> +Finally, most commands that take filenames will optionally allow you
>> +to precede any filename by a commit, to specify a particular version
>> +fo the file:
>> +
>> +-------------------------------------
>> +$ git diff v2.5:Makefile HEAD:Makefile.in
>> +-------------------------------------
>
> Why not mention also :<stage>:<filename>, or would <stage> be not defined in
> this place of tutorial?

I do not think being able to do diff with arbitrary stage is often used in practice. By definition, you would want to do diff with a stage during a conflicted merge, and most of the time the default combined diff without any colon form should give you the most useful results. Also, ":<path>" to mean the entry in the index is often equivalent to "git diff --cached".

IOW, these are obscure special purpose notation, and I do not think tutorial is a good place to cover them.