Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-filter-branch: add --egrep-filter option

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:01:43 -0500

Hi,

Michael O'Cleirigh wrote:

> After considering your comment I have to agree with you that it is a
> special case of index-filter and probably not useful/general for
> enough other cases to justify adding in a new command line option.

Now, why do you give up so easily? ;-)

Surely what your patch is hinting at is the possibility of an
--ls-tree-filter (for lack of a better name) that works with trees
without the overhead of unpacking them.  On the other hand I do agree
with Hannes that allowing only "egrep" is a bit overspecialized.

In practice I would have used something like

	--commit-filter='
		tree=$1 &&
		new_tree=$(
			git ls-tree $commit |
			egrep "$filter_egrep" |
			git mktree
		) &&
		shift &&
		git_commit_non_empty_tree "$new_tree" "$@"
	'

so another (simpler?) solution might be an entry for the EXAMPLES
section of the manual along these lines.

Ciao,
Jonathan