Re: [FILE] Docs update

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Apr 24, 2005, 21:44 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0504241438280.15879@ppc970.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <426BF790.9070406@dgreaves.com>

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005, David Greaves wrote:

> 
> And I've attached this as a file rather than a patch to make it easier 
> for people to read.

Suggestion: move "diff-tree" up above "diff-cache", since as it is now, 
you explain "diff-cache" in terms of diff-tree, before you've even 
explained diff-tree in the first place.

Also, the current diff-tree has an extension:

	################################################################
	diff-tree
	        diff-tree [-r] [-z] <tree/commit> <tree/commit> [pattern]*

	Compares the content and mode of the blobs found via two tree objects.

where the "pattern" arguments are the pathnames you are interested in seeing the differences of.

For example, if you're only interested in differences in some architecture-specific files, you might do

	diff-tree -r <tree/commit> <tree/commit> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64

and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.

Or if you are searching for what changed in just kernel/sched.c, just do

	diff-tree -r <tree/commit> <tree/commit> kernel/sched.c

and it will ignore all differences to other files.

The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly (ie there are no wildcards - although matching a directory, which it does support, can obviously be seen as a "wildcard" for all the files under that directory).

		Linus