Re: [PATCH] Add -r flag to show-diff for diff-cache/diff-tree like output.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Apr 26, 2005, 23:44 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0504261639420.18901@ppc970.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vd5shm94l.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>
> >>>>> "LT" == Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:
> 
> LT> Why not just make this the default? Who really cares about
> LT> show-diff?
> 
> Me, to care enough about it to send patches in ;-).

Well, I actually care abotu "show-diff" too, in the sense that I actually use it all the time.

The thing is, I just care about the format. To me, a "diff-tree" like format is actually _better_ than the full diff, 99% of the time, since what I really want to know "what state is my repository in", I don't usually care about the details within the files.

Ie I want to know exactly the same thing that most scripts would want to know: which files are dirty and need to be checked in, which ones are still unmerged etc.

> Later I'll add -p flag to diff-cache and diff-tree, so the usage
> of these three commands match.

I don't know why you're so dead set on creating the diff directly, when you _don't_ actually create the diff directly anyway (ie you call out to a helper process - "diff", regardless).

The thing is, "-p" is strictly weaker than doing the UNIX pipe way, since the latter trivially does the same time (add a simple script if you don't want to type it), but can also do things like "grep the filenames going past" or similar.

But hey, as long as the source code is clean, I don't care _that_ much.

		Linus