From: Matt McClure <matthewlmcclure@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:06:43 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] contrib: added git-diffall
Message-ID: <loom.20120411T010200-132@post.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAFouetiSpsZGtLt2tG4ou-H18zigNx5xWQH4cy8GrL1eDxbjJw@mail.gmail.com>

Tim Henigan <tim.henigan <at> gmail.com> writes:

> >> +     do
> >> +             cp "$file" "$git_top_dir/${file#$tmp/$right_dir/}"
> >> +     done
> >> +fi
> >
> > This will copy new files created in $right_dir.  Is that intended?
> 
> hmmm...that was not intended.  If would be odd for the user to create
> new files in this tmp directory, but if the diff tool automatically
> generates any files then this could result in unwanted files.

I think more generally, I would prefer if either side of the comparison is the
working copy that the temp directory on that side be populated with symlinks.

A particularly bad failure mode of the copy-back approach is:

git diffall --copy-back
# while my diffall tool is running, I edit the file somewhere else.
# quit my diffall tool
# --> my edits in the other tool are overwritten by diffall

Editing the files in place via symlinks would resolve that.

Matt