Re: About git reporting missing newline for symlinks

> On Thu, Oct 13 2022, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>>> 	\ The filename pointed to by the symlink does not end in a newline
>>>> While I do not think it would break anybody, I doubt it would give
>>>> us much value.  One line above that output is a line that any user,
>>>> who is vaguely familiar with the contents being compared, can
>>>> recognize as giving a pathname, the contents of the symbolic link.
>>> Clearly it confused the initial reporter upthread :)
>> But to such a user, I highly suspect that the rephased message above
>> still looks like a warning, and will result in the same reaction.
>>
>> IOW, you want to explain why "does not end in a newline" is worth
>> expressing in the output.  Saying "does not end in a newline" alone
>> would tell the user what they already know (i.e. the symlink stores
>> the target filename without an extra LF at the end).
> Yes, but isn't the point of the report/confusion that we're inserting
> what looks like the warning you get when you forget a \n at the end of a
> source file, so a user might wonder why they're seeing it at all.
>
> Whereas what we're *really* doing there is not really about that at all,
> but just inserting a bit of magic so that the diff format & its
> consumers grok that this line we're inserting there isn't supposed to
> have a \n, as we're working with a filename.
>
> Maybe e.g.:
> 	
> 	diff --git a/RelNotes b/RelNotes
> 	index d505db645be..758368388a4 120000
> 	--- a/RelNotes
> 	+++ b/RelNotes
> 	@@ -1 +1 @@
> 	-Documentation/RelNotes/2.38.0.txt
> 	\ No newline at end of file
> 	+Documentation/RelNotes/2.39.0.txt
> 	\ No newline at end of file
>
> Would, for those users, be less confusing as:
>
> 	diff --git a/RelNotes b/RelNotes
> 	index d505db645be..758368388a4 120000
> 	--- a/RelNotes
> 	+++ b/RelNotes
> 	@@ -1 +1 @@
> 	-Documentation/RelNotes/2.38.0.txt
> 	\ The symlink above has no trailing NL in its filename
> 	+Documentation/RelNotes/2.39.0.txt
> 	\ The symlink above has no trailing NL in its filename
>
> *dunno* :)
>