Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add [] as an alias for a reference to the empty tree

From: Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com>
Date: May 10, 2010, 11:00 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTikrRJZu2I5BYU-UqtjYh0x6WMJ8Frh8DKPUM-yK@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100510100050.GB2098@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Heya,

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:00, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:51:05AM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
>> Must it be ALL CAPS? In Mercurial the fairly elegant 'nil' is used for
>> the empty commit, why can't we do the same?
>
> [Please watch your quoting, which is a bit misleading there].

Apologies, I accidentally removed Junio's attribution line. I fully intended to reply to both your and Junio's post at the same time :).

> I think the intent was that because they clash in the normal refs
> namespace, we would set them apart with caps (and we have already
> sort-of claimed the all-caps namespace with things like HEAD,
> FETCH_HEAD, etc).

While I understand the rationale, (of already having two all-caps refs), I don't think adding more of them is a good idea. Aesthetically I think 'nil' does make sense, but I agree that 'worktree' and 'index' as lower-case names do not.

> The point was to make a more obvious and verbose alternative for people
> who find "git diff" a little confusing. E.g.:

I don't think that all caps names make for a good solution to that problem though.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier