From: Linus Torvalds Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 19:32:52 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/4] Tweak diff output further to make it a bit less distracting. Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7vu0l1fz6p.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> On Tue, 17 May 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > 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 > 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