Re: [PATCH 0/6] Optionally restrict range-diff output to "left" or "right" range only

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Date: Feb 4, 2021, 22:48 UTC
Message-ID: <YBx5rmVsg1LJhSKN@nand.local>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqtuqr4frw.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 02:41:39PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> "Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com>
> writes:
>
> > One of my quite common workflows is to see whether an ancient topic branch I
> > have lying about has made it into Git. Since my local commit OIDs have
> > nothing to do with the OIDs of the corresponding commits in git/git, my only
> > way is to fire up git range-diff ...upstream/master, but of course that
> > output contains way more commits than I care about.
> >
> > To help this use case, here is a patch series that teaches git range-diff
> > the --left-only and --right-only options in the end, restricting the output
> > to those commits and commit pairs that correspond to the commits in the
> > first and the second range, respectively.
>
> Makes sense.

I'd add an additional use-case, which is ignoring new commits from upstream when displaying a range-diff in rerolled patch series.

Oftentimes I'll find that the automatically-prepared range diff that 'git format-patch --cover-letter --range-diff' generates will include new commits from upstream, so these new options should help me ignore those in the output.

As an aside: I am curious if I'm missing something when you say the "only way" is to ask for a 'git range-diff ...@{u}'. IIUC what you're describing, I often resort to using 'git cherry' for that exact thing. But, I may not be quite understanding your use-case (and why git-cherry doesn't do what you want already).

My latter question is purely for satisfying my own curiosity; I don't have any problem with a '--{left,right}-only' option in range-diff. From my quick read of the patches, it all looks pretty sane to me.

Thanks, Taylor