Re: git full diff output issues..

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 26, 2005, 20:33 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0505261316250.2307@ppc970.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0505262036500.16829@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>

On Thu, 26 May 2005, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> 
> Given that git already has the metadata lines in the diff ("old mode", 
> "deleted file mode", etc) why not simply add another metadata line "name" 
> and what follows that is the name until an end of line character (or a NUL 
> if you want file names with embedded new lines).  You can then only emit 
> the "name" metadata line when no actual diff is present and hence the name 
> is uncertain.

Yes, that would work.

However, I ended up just validating the name parsing by making sure that when I parse the "git --diff" line, I only take the name if I can see it being the same for both the old and the new. IOW, if I see

	diff --git a/hi b/hello

then I won't take it, but if I see

	diff --git hi there/I am/being difficult   oopsie dir/I am/being difficult

then I get "I am/being difficult" by virtue of checking the two names against each other.

This means, btw, that the "git --diff" format must _not_ do

	diff --git a/file /dev/null
	deleted file mode 100644

because in that case I don't trust the filename enough. Of course, this all only happens when deleting empty files, if the file had any contents, then I will see the unambiguos filename on the '---' line, and again be happy.

IOW, git-apply is being pretty anal about things, but it looks like that works out well.

			Linus