Re: [PATCH v4] log,diff-tree: add --combined-all-names option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 7, 2019, 23:31 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqlg2rmazz.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BHyLFNcdh+=hf=R5xhUoNAQHPophxgc5e2HRqgeTU4e8Q@mail.gmail.com>

Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> writes:

> Now, the question: In addition to the two "from" headers, how many
> "to" headers do we emit?  In particular, do we emit both a "copied to
> F" and a "renamed to F" header, or just a combined "renamed/copied to
> F" header?

There is only a single path that can be on the "to", as there is only one final result, but _how_ the contents got to that path would be different, so to be technically truly correct, you would end up showing N "to" lines for a N-way merge, each of which gives the same path in the postimage, but some may say renamed, another may say copioed and some others may need to say in-place edited.

That would increase the number of necessary lines from N (from) + 1 (to) to N*2 (N for each of from and to), which makes it even less economical.

And showing a single "renamed/copied" feels more like a cop-out to avoid being techincally incorrect, than giving a useful piece of information to the users.

I am inclined to say that we should do _without_ any "to" line. And if we can do without any "to", perhaps we do not need "from", either.