Re: [PATCH 2/4] Tweak diff output further to make it a bit less distracting.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 17, 2005, 19:32 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0505171227260.18337@ppc970.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vu0l1fz6p.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> I've been thinking about doing some rename detection in
> diff-helper for some time.  Here is what that would produce in
> your proposed file format (BTW, wouldn't the earlier patch ready
> for merge already?), if you move file frotz to file nitfol and
> at the same time do some edits:

This has the advantage of working with any old "patch" version, but it has the disadvantage of being human-unreadable, and big.

To me, there really are only two reasons to do rename diffs:
 - smaller diffs
 - human readability (you can actually see what changed)

and if you want to have compatibility with a "patch" program that doesn't support the feature (like your example), you basically lose both of those advantages. You have _some_ human-readability, but it basically boils down to "ignore all those deletes/creates".

So I'd really suggest having just a flag that says "pure old diff format" or "new diff format with renames", and if the latter is selected, then do _just_ the changes, ie the rename+change case would really boil down to getting just

Show 9 quoted lines

>     diff -git a/nitfol b/nitfol
>     rename old frotz
>     rename new nitfol
>     --- a/nitfol
>     +++ b/nitfol
>     @@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
>      xyzzy
>      rezrov
>     +gnusto

(except I think it would be nice to have the renamed names show up in the "diff" and "---/+++" lines too)

		Linus