Re: Git help for kernel archeology, suppress diffs caused by CVS keyword expansion

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Jul 22, 2007, 19:17 UTC
Message-ID: <85644ci6yv.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0707221205080.3607@woody.linux-foundation.org>

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

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007, Jon Smirl wrote:
>>
>> It would really be useful if git diff had an option for suppressing
>> diffs caused by CVS keyword expansion.
>
> I really think it's not a "git diff" issue, but it might be a "import" 
> issue.
>
> IOW, I think you'd be a *lot* better off just not importing those
> things in the first place (which is what CVS does internally), or
> possibly importing them as two trees (ie you'd have the "non-log"
> version and the "log expansion" version, so that you can track and
> compare both).

One problem is that those strings more often than not are involved in some magic computation, like placing version and date information into extracted output. While an import of the unexpanded version is really the sanest option, it might render the resulting code inoperable.

CVS diff itself reports those differences, too (and it makes for a good quota of merge problems even in CVS), so it is not like we are in bad company here.

Uh, strike that.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum