Re: [PATCH] RFC: Introduce '.gitorderfile'

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 12, 2017, 23:54 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqa849yzwh.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170712205734.h77fgbbkavwpkr4h@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I could see somebody arguing that format-patch should respect a project
> preference, since its primary purpose is to communicate your work to the
> rest of the project.
>
> But then you could make a similar argument for other diff options, too.

Yeah, and that opens a whole can of worms.

We let projects to ship clean/smudge or textconv filters and also mark paths to which these tools may be of help, but we do not let projects to automatically enable them in the cloned repository. The projects must _tell_ the user how to run the last step (e.g. "There is a tools/setup-my-clone script shipped with the source; running it will add necessary configurations to work better with our project").

I do not think usefulness of diff.orderfile is being questioned, but I think it is something we should treat just like any other thing that affects repository configuration. A .gitorderfile that allows the project to behave as if we allowed to auto-enable just one thing in the clone, while not allowing others, a source of issues and unnecessary headaches later.

Besides, diff-order is *not* the only order that matters in the use of the system, and we _will_ regret the name ".gitorderfile" later, as people would start making noises about forcing ls-files and other things to also show the list following that order.