Re: [PATCH v2 02/18] Add a new builtin: branch-diff

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: May 6, 2018, 20:51 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cS0pvdg78fGUu8m2xspDDMHxi=uAMCkbLuthy7R4p3fQw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1805061419530.77@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>

On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 8:21 AM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Sun, 6 May 2018, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
>> > On Sat, 5 May 2018, Jeff King wrote:
>> >> One minor point about the name: will it become annoying as a tab
>> >> completion conflict with git-branch?
>>
>> If tbdiff were "Thomas's branch diff", I would call this jbdiff ;-)
>> but I think the 't' in there stands for "topic", not "Thomas's".
>> How about "git topic-diff"?
>
> Or `git topic-branch-diff`?
>
> But then, we do not really use the term `topic branch` a lot in Git, *and*
> the operation in question is not really about showing differences between
> topic branches, but between revisions of topic branches.
>
> So far, the solution I like best is to use `git branch --diff <...>`,
> which also neatly side-steps the problem of cluttering the top-level
> command list (because tab completion).

Let's, please, not fall into the trap of polluting git-branch with utterly unrelated functionality, as has happened a few times with other Git commands. Let's especially not do so merely for the sake of tab-completion. git-branch is for branch management; it's not for diff'ing.

Of the suggestions thus far, Junio's git-topic-diff seems the least worse, and doesn't suffer from tab-completion problems.

Building on Duy's suggestion: git-interdiff could be a superset of the current git-branch-diff:

    # standard interdiff
    git interdiff womp-v1 womp-v2
    # 'tbdiff'-like output
    git interdiff --topic womp-v1 womp-v2

(Substitute "--topic" by any other better name.)