Subject: Re: [PATCH] diff: don't read index when --no-index is given

From: Jens Lehmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 18:27:22 +0100

Am 09.12.2013 16:16, schrieb Jonathan Nieder:
> Thomas Gummerer wrote:
> 
>> git diff --no-index ... currently reads the index, during setup, when
>> calling gitmodules_config().  In the usual case this gives us some
>> performance drawbacks,
> 
> Makes sense.

Hmm, but this will disable the submodule specific ignore configuration
options defined in the .gitmodules file, no? (E.g. when diffing two
directories containing submodules)

>>                        but it's especially annoying if there is a broken
>> index file.
>
> Is this really a normal case?  It makes sense that as a side-effect it
> is easier to use "git diff --no-index" as a general-purpose tool while
> investigating a broken repo, but I would have thought that quickly
> learning a repo is broken is a good thing in any case.

But I agree that dying with "index file corrupt" is a bit strange when
calling diff with --no-index. Wouldn't adding a "gently" option (which
could then warn instead of dying) to gitmodules_config() be a better
solution here?