Re: "git diff" surprising default output

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 1, 2023, 19:40 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqzg8wmfa6.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <871qm849co.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> I figured the offender is --indent-heuristic that is described in the
> manual as:
>
>       Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make
>       patches easier to read. This is the default.
>
> but apparently rather makes patches harder to read, at least at some
> conditions. Turning it off helps to get the expected result:

As a heuristic, it is not surprising that it has some corner cases where it does not shine. I think the version that was eventually merged starts here

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/cover.1473068229.git.mhagger@alum.mit.edu/

and we should be able to find a few links to the original observation that motivated the change, e.g.

  https://public-inbox.org/git/cover.1470259583.git.mhagger@alum.mit.edu/

Thanks.