Re: [PATCH] range-diff: add a --no-patch option to show a summary

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 6, 2018, 04:16 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqva5aet72.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20181105200650.31177-1-avarab@gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> This change doesn't update git-format-patch with a --no-patch
> option. That can be added later similar to how format-patch first
> learned --range-diff, and then --creation-factor in
> 8631bf1cdd ("format-patch: add --creation-factor tweak for
> --range-diff", 2018-07-22). I don't see why anyone would want this for
> format-patch, it pretty much defeats the point of range-diff.

I am OK not to have this option integrated to format-patch from day one, but I do not think it is a good idea to hint that it should not be done later.

Does it defeats the point of range-diff to omit the patch part in the context of the cover letter? How?

I think the output with this option is a good addition to the cover letter as an abbreviated form (as opposed to the full range-diff, whose support was added earlier) that gives an overview.

Calling this --[no-]patch might make it harder to integrate it to format-patch later, though. I suspect that people would expect "format-patch --no-patch ..." to omit both the patch part of the range-diff output *AND* the patch that should be applied to the codebase (it of course would defeat the point of format-patch, so today's format-patch would not pay attention to --no-patch, of course). We need to be careful not to break that when it happens.