From: Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter•com>
To: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx•de>
Cc: "Jean-François Veillette" <jean_francois_veillette@yahoo•ca>,
"Matthieu Moy" <Matthieu.Moy@imag•fr>,
"Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox•com>,
git@vger•kernel.org
Subject: Re: git-diff on touched files: bug or feature?
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:10:44 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <46B1F3F4.5030504@midwinter.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0708021541520.14781@racer.site>
Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> This use case has not much to do with new users. A new user _has_ to know
> that updating all files, even if their content does not change, is not
> right.
>
Someone who has used, say, Subversion might have a perfectly reasonable
expectation that "git diff" will show differences in content, and when
there are no differences in content, will not mention a file at all.
Other version control systems have "diff" commands that ignore touched
files.
I admit I also thought the empty diffs were a bug (albeit a minor one
not worth making noise about) until this thread. Now I understand why it
happens, though I still think we'd be better off just not displaying the
filename in git-diff until we know there's an actual diff to display.
I certainly don't think the "it's a feature: it reminds you when you've
edited a file without changing it" argument holds any water at all. If
that were truly the intent, if we truly considered that to be useful
information a developer would want to get at after the fact, then why
would git-status throw away that information? If I check to see what
files I've modified/added (for which I run git-status) why does that
automatically imply I am no longer interested in being reminded that I
have saved a file without making changes, especially given that such
files *don't* show up in the git-status output? git-status is silently
losing information here; it gives you no indication that it has
refreshed the index for those touched-but-not-edited files.
Now, I happen to think throwing away that information is just fine,
because I don't think I have ever once cared to know that I touched a
file but didn't change it. But fundamentally it's either a piece of
information we care about (in which case we shouldn't go silently
discarding it) or not (in which case it is just clutter in git-diff).
In the meantime, though, it's trivial enough to put a wrapper around
git-diff to filter out the diffless files. I haven't cared enough to
bother, but if I did it'd be just a few lines of Perl, no big deal.
-Steve
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-08-02 15:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 75+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-08-01 16:17 git-diff on touched files: bug or feature? Matthieu Moy
2007-08-01 17:26 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-01 19:02 ` Alexandre Julliard
2007-08-01 19:07 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-01 19:17 ` Alexandre Julliard
2007-08-02 9:23 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 9:51 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 9:57 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 10:48 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 14:04 ` Jean-François Veillette
2007-08-02 14:43 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 15:10 ` Steven Grimm [this message]
2007-08-02 15:23 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 15:45 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 17:58 ` J. Bruce Fields
2007-08-03 5:37 ` [PATCH] Add --show-touched option to show "diff --git" line when contents are unchanged Steven Grimm
2007-08-03 6:30 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 10:23 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-03 20:33 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 21:32 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-03 21:50 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 23:01 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-03 23:36 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-05 19:42 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-05 19:45 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-05 19:57 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-06 15:56 ` Matthias Lederhofer
2007-08-06 16:10 ` David Kastrup
2007-08-06 16:16 ` David Kastrup
2007-08-06 20:05 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-06 20:34 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-07 6:32 ` David Kastrup
2007-08-07 13:34 ` J. Bruce Fields
2007-08-07 4:22 ` Linus Torvalds
2007-08-07 4:37 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-07 6:41 ` David Kastrup
2007-08-08 3:07 ` Linus Torvalds
2007-08-08 3:44 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-08 8:26 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-08 8:43 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-08 9:13 ` David Kastrup
2007-08-08 9:23 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-08 9:58 ` Jakub Narebski
2007-08-07 5:56 ` Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 5:57 ` [PATCH] Add a note about the index being updated by git-status in some cases Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 6:35 ` [PATCH] git-diff: Output a warning about stale files in the index Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 6:46 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-07 7:17 ` [PATCH v2] " Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 7:46 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-07 7:51 ` Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 9:04 ` Jakub Narebski
2007-08-11 20:07 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-08 3:42 ` [PATCH] Add --show-touched option to show "diff --git" line when contents are unchanged Linus Torvalds
2007-08-07 6:39 ` Steven Grimm
2007-08-07 6:47 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 20:50 ` git-diff on touched files: bug or feature? Junio C Hamano
2007-08-02 9:54 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-02 10:01 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-02 12:08 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 12:21 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 19:56 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 7:04 ` Jeff King
2007-08-03 7:59 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 8:24 ` Jeff King
2007-08-03 8:57 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-03 8:40 ` Shawn O. Pearce
2007-08-03 9:13 ` Junio C Hamano
2007-08-02 12:05 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 12:19 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 12:26 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 14:39 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 14:49 ` Matthieu Moy
2007-08-02 15:12 ` Johannes Schindelin
2007-08-02 13:25 ` Joel Reed
2007-08-02 15:05 ` Johannes Schindelin
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