Re: log/show: relative pathnames do not work in rev:path

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Dec 18, 2007, 21:53 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.9999.0712181347140.21557@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <200712182224.28152.jnareb@gmail.com>

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007, Jakub Narebski wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> What cwd? <path> in <tree-ish>:<path> syntax is "relative" to <tree-ish>.
> IMHO "<tree-ish>:<path>" should be considered (and is considered) as
> one object: current working directory doesn't matter at all there,
> contrary to "<tree-ish> -- <pathspec>" where it is natural that <pathspec>
> is relative to current working directory.

Indeed.

The <treeish>:<path> syntax *is* relative, but it's relative to the exact *treeish* that is given. It has nothing what-so-ever to do with the current working directory, since the user has explicitly given an exact tree object, and trying to fake that out would be actively wrong.

That said, I can kind of understand the wish for something like this, and I suspect that we could make the "commit->tree" translation take the current path into account. In other words, maybe we should have something like this:

	/*
	 * This sequence currently works
	 */
	[torvalds@woody git]$ git rev-parse HEAD
	f9c5a80cdf2265f2df7712fad9f1fb7ef68b4768

	[torvalds@woody git]$ git rev-parse HEAD^{tree}
	051fb0c0dff4371f97f8ad9407f9f1fd335b1682

	[torvalds@woody git]$ git rev-parse HEAD^{tree}:t
	49d8bcd7a2df5c17193b1d002c4a8489d4fa990c

	/*
	 * .. but this would be new
	 */
	[torvalds@woody git]$ cd t
	[torvalds@woody t]$ git rev-parse HEAD^{tree}
	49d8bcd7a2df5c17193b1d002c4a8489d4fa990c

where the magic is *not* done by any "SHA1 path lookup" at all, but is simply done by the commit->tree lookup. At least at that point it would make logical sense (although it would probably be quite painful to implement).

			Linus