Re: is there a reason pre-commit.sample uses "git diff-index"?

From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: May 31, 2018, 17:05 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8CP=1_bHAzs+mveaJvbOOzr9vny-2xz6kM4cEcCYWmOOw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1805311235410.15130@localhost.localdomain>

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 6:38 PM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

>
>   was going over some hooks and writing some tutorials for some of the
> commit-related, client-side hooks, and was wondering (perhaps
> stupidly) why the pre-commit.sample hook uses, as its last line:
>
>   exec git diff-index --check --cached $against --
>            ^^^^^^^^^^
>
> as in, could this not be done equivalently with just git diff, not git
> diff-index? i just did a quick test and it seems to do the same thing,
> but i've never taken a close look at git diff-index before so i may
> just be clueless about some important distinction.

git diff-index is "plumbing", designed for writing scripts. "git diff" on the other hand is for users and its behavior may change even if it breaks backward compatibility.

-- 
Duy