From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 08:45:11 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] tutorial: expanded discussion of commit history
Message-ID: <7vzmhacuso.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <e4rsef$v34$1@sea.gmane.org>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

> 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.