Re: About git reporting missing newline for symlinks

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 12, 2022, 21:31 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7d14k9uh.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CAAHd=zcrU3VJro1R3xDj3hmqGXZHUA6rHuDFxwhF5aewNvA8xQ@mail.gmail.com>

Ignacio Taranto <ignacio.taranto@eclypsium.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> So, both git diff and git show display "\ No newline at end of file"
> for symlinks.
>
> I think this is related to how Git renders diffs, IMO it shouldn't
> display a warning about newlines for symlinks.
>
> Am I making any sense here?

Yes, but not really.

It is not "warning" at all. The users want to know when compared contents do or do not end with an incomplete line at the end, and the "\ No newline" is the diff's way to give that single bit of information to us.

And the contents of a symbolic link typically is a single incomplete line, so it is expected to see "\ No newline" when comparing them.

This is important as "git diff | git -C ../some/where/else apply" should be able to recreate the change in the current repository (which may have change to or addition of a symbolic link) in the other repository, and "git apply" on the receiving end must be able to tell that the symbolic link it needs to create in the other repository must not have an extra LF at the end.