Re: [PATCH RFC] diff --no-index: teach option to exclude files by pattern

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 15, 2025, 18:09 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtt5lzqxh.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xqg3S0q=n3nrTUJJuYicooDm83Q32AkpzRt1u7rH3n3Pw@mail.gmail.com>

Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> I guess the one weirdness is that pathspecs must come after the first
> 2 arguments, since we need to find 2 paths first. But this matches the
> way that treeish must come first in git diff-tree -r takes treeish and
> then pathspecs, and you can't re-order them arbitrarily either.
>
> Does this sound like a reasonable extension to the existing 2 argument
> form of git diff --no-index?

Absolutely.

Or you could even use "--" convention in the examples you would write in the documentation, even though you may not absolutely need it for the purpose of parsing the command line, to highlight the fact that two things to be compared is given and then with an optional pathspec after the two things, e.g.,

 $ git diff --no-index git-1.6.0 git-2.43.0 -- Documentation/

or something silly like that.