Re: [PATCH] log,diff-tree: add --combined-with-paths options for merges with renames

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 25, 2019, 16:30 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BE9qFHGmJ-qO4Bx+wmO8N7pO_hdros5Q2hxd32=zU0F5A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <e9dd9394-e34d-e948-9a9c-83338b672d65@gmail.com>

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 6:45 AM Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

>
> On 1/24/2019 11:46 AM, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > As an alternative, I considered perhaps trying to sell it as a bugfix
> > (how often do people use -M, -c, and --raw together and have renames
> > in merge commits -- can I just change the format to include the old
> > names), but was worried that since diff-tree is plumbing and that the
> > format was documented to not include original filename(s), that I'd be
> > breaking backward compatibility in an important way for someone and
> > thus opted for a new flag to get the behavior I needed.
>
> This is wise. Changing the format is likely to break at least one GUI
> client or tool, especially because many depend on the installed version
> of Git instead of shipping with one "blessed" client.
>
> In addition, there may be whitespace in the filenames. It appears the
> diff format separates the filenames with tab characters. Is it
> possible to have tab character in a file name? That would make the output
> ambiguous, but is no worse than our current output in a non-combined
> diff.

No, it's actually unambiguous with or without the -z option. Without -z, pathnames with "unusual" characters (whose definition depends on core.quotePath) will cause the pathname to be enclosed in double-quotes with the unusual characters handed with backslashes and control characters. With -z, it separates pathnames with a nul character instead.

> I'll repeat Brian's request for tests. I trust the compiler and the
> test suite more than I trust my ability to read code.

Yep, I'll add a pair and use filenames with multiple tabs.