Subject: Re: Git archiving only branch work

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 16:39:38 -0500

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 01:36:48PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > I agree it is probably OK in practice and for the OP's question, but it
> > is nice to have "-z" variants so you do not have to worry about quoting
> > at all. I'd argue that a "--stdin -z" should probably also accept raw
> > filenames, not pathspecs, too (so you do not have to use
> > "--literal-pathspecs" elsewhere).
> 
> I agree "--stdin -z" is a good thing but what makes you think that
> the producer of the data is _always_ walking the directory hierarchy
> and showing the pathnames it sees?  I think use of literal-pathspecs
> should not be tied to the use of either --stdin or -z.

I agree they are technically orthogonal, but I cannot think of a case
where I have ever generated actual _pathspecs_, which might have
wildcards, and needed to use "-z". The point of using "-z" is that you
do not know what crap you are feeding.

Normally I'm in favor of keeping things as flexible as possible, but it
seems very likely that somebody would forget pathspecs in such a case
(the OP did in his example, and I know I have many times in the past).
I don't feel too strongly about it, though.

-Peff