Re: [PATCH 3/3] last-modified: better document how depth in handled

From: Toon Claes <toon@iotcl.com>
Date: Dec 2, 2025, 11:01 UTC
Message-ID: <87tsy9w3k1.fsf@iotcl.com>
In-Reply-To: <aS1uz6mc0WW9kjzN@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

> Hm, that's confusing indeed. Is it possible for git-last-modified(1) to
> do the "right thing" automatically? That is, given "sub/file", show when
> that specific file has been last modified? Or is there a good
> (non-technical) reason it behaves the way it does?

You bring up a good point. In the version of git-blame-tree(1) that GitHub did share, the `--recursive` flag is enabled by default. So if you pass a file path to the command, you'll get the "right thing". But as I am pointing out in this patch, if you pass a subtree, everything in that subtree is shown too. You could argue this is the "right thing".

Anyhow, in the version of git-last-modified(1) I submitted upstream, recursive is not enabled by default. My reason, at the time option --max-depth wasn't implemented yet. I submitted those changes in a separate series (these patches also originate from GitHub by the way). If those patches wouldn't land, I think always-on recursive behavior for git-last-modified(1) would be quite annoying.

So long story short, as git-last-modified(1) is still marked as "EXPERIMENTAL", shall we make recursive always-on?

-- 
Cheers,
Toon