From: Patrick Steinhardt Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:49:16 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] docs: clarify git-rev-list(1) --filter behavior Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Tue, Dec 16, 2025 at 08:36:56AM -0600, Justin Tobler wrote: > On 25/12/16 09:12AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 16, 2025 at 10:13:22AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > > > diff --git a/Documentation/rev-list-options.adoc b/Documentation/rev-list-options.adoc > > > > index d9665d82c8..453ec59057 100644 > > > > --- a/Documentation/rev-list-options.adoc > > > > +++ b/Documentation/rev-list-options.adoc > > > > @@ -983,7 +983,9 @@ to name units in KiB, MiB, or GiB. For example, `blob:limit=1k` > > > > is the same as 'blob:limit=1024'. > > > > + > > > > The form `--filter=object:type=(tag|commit|tree|blob)` omits all objects > > > > -which are not of the requested type. > > > > +which are not of the requested type. Note that explicitly provided objects > > > > +ignore filters and are always printed unless `--filter-provided-objects` is > > > > +also specified. > > > > > > The above documents the status quo correctly, so let's queue, but it > > > is unfortunate that we need an extra option to do this. > > > > True. I didn't feel comfortable to change the default to also filter > > provided objects when I discovered that we don't, hence the new option. > > It's not great though as it certainly is surprising behaviour, but I'm > > not sure whether we can really change it without breaking existing > > users. Oh, well... > > Out of curiousity, are there any known use-cases where a user _would_ > want the provided objects printed along with the filtered ones? From my > naive perspective it almost doesn't even sound useful and appears to > just be a sharp edge. This maybe not worthing worrying too much about > though. I don't really have an idea, but that's exactly the problem here. Filters are for example used by partial clones, and I don't want to break those because I'm not aware of some of the intricacies. Which doesn't mean that there _are_ use cases where this is actually the desired behaviour, but rather that there needs to be some research to come to a conclusion here. Patrick