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

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Dec 19, 2007, 01:16 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.9999.0712181711100.21557@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <56b7f5510712181503l1e5dcacds23511d968f98aedb@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007, Dana How wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> 
> Both of your counterexamples use 2 disjoint directory trees:
> C: vs D:,  or trees on different machines.
> 
> The cases we are talking about are all subtrees of the working tree.
> There is a useful cwd suffix.

No.

The cases we're talking of are *not* subtrees of the working tree.

The SHA1 of a commit may well be a totally disjoint tree. Try it in the git repository with something like

	git show origin/man:man1/git-fsck.1

or

	git show origin/todo:TODO

and realize that Dscho's examples of using the DOS/Windows drive letters is actually a really good example of what that <commit>:<pathname> syntax is.

In fact, you can very well think of the commit/tree as a "drive letter". It really does go into another namespace entirely. It's just that often that namespace does bear some relationship to the currently checked out branch. But that's just an "often", it's not at all a given.

> Don't you think that
>   git <op> commit:./file.c
> could occasionally be more convenient than
>   git <op> commit:very/long/and/boring/path/equal/to/cwd/file.c

It's not about "convenience". It's about *sanity* and good design. And the fact is, that "commit:path" format really has nothing to do with the CWD in the general case.

		Linus