RE: how to display file history?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 15, 2006, 17:54 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605151049470.3866@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <CFF307C98FEABE47A452B27C06B85BB670FB0A@hdsmsx411.amr.corp.intel.com>

On Mon, 15 May 2006, Brown, Len wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

>
> >	git log --stat -- A
> 
> very handy indeed.
> 
> I was surprised on initial use that --stat is
> limited to the file specified in "A" and doesn't
> expand to describe the entire commit that touches "A".
> (ie. the stat output is a subset of what is associated
> with the displayed commit comments).
> 
> This, of course, is clear now, it just isn't what
> I expected on first use.

Well,  you can obviously have your cake and eat it too (ie "--full-diff").

I don't often end up using the "--full-diff" thing. It's almost never actually worth it until I find the diff that I actually start caring about, and the full diff just makes it harder to see the part I explicitly told git I was interested in.

So the default "show only diffs for the files asked for" behaviour is in my opinion much superior (and it used to be the only one), because the "show the whole thing" part ends up being something you use only once you've already skimmed the default case and decide to go deeper.

Of course, "gitk" ends up using the full diff by default in its diff window. I'm not convinced that's the right thing, but usually when I use gitk I'm primarily looking at the history and the commit messages to decide if it's a relevant one, not the diff, so I don't think it matters.

			Linus