Subject: [PATCH v2] diff: disable rename detection with --quiet

From: René Scharfe <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2025 17:43:36 +0100

Detecting renames and copies improves diff's output.  This effort is
wasted if we don't show any.  Disable detection in that case.

This actually fixes the error code when using the options --cached,
--find-copies-harder, --no-ext-diff and --quiet together:
run_diff_index() indirectly calls diff-lib.c::show_modified(), which
queues even non-modified entries using diff_change() because we need
them for copy detection.  diff_change() sets flags.has_changes, though,
which causes diff_can_quit_early() to declare we're done after seeing
only the very first entry -- way too soon.

Using --cached, --find-copies-harder and --quiet together without
--no-ext-diff was not affected even before, as it causes the flag
flags.diff_from_contents to be set, which disables the optimization
in a different way.

Reported-by: D. Ben Knoble <[email-masked]>
Suggested-by: Phillip Wood <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <[email-masked]>
---
 diff.c              |  2 ++
 t/t4007-rename-3.sh | 10 ++++++++++
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+)

diff --git a/diff.c b/diff.c
index a1961526c0..efa8d9773c 100644
--- a/diff.c
+++ b/diff.c
@@ -4987,6 +4987,8 @@ void diff_setup_done(struct diff_options *options)
 	if (options->flags.quick) {
 		options->output_format = DIFF_FORMAT_NO_OUTPUT;
 		options->flags.exit_with_status = 1;
+		options->detect_rename = 0;
+		options->flags.find_copies_harder = 0;
 	}
 
 	/*
diff --git a/t/t4007-rename-3.sh b/t/t4007-rename-3.sh
index e8faf0dd2e..3fc81bcd76 100755
--- a/t/t4007-rename-3.sh
+++ b/t/t4007-rename-3.sh
@@ -41,6 +41,16 @@ test_expect_success 'copy detection, cached' '
 	compare_diff_raw current expected
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'exit code of quiet copy detection' '
+	test_expect_code 1 \
+	git diff --quiet --cached --find-copies-harder $tree
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'exit code of quiet copy detection with --no-ext-diff' '
+	test_expect_code 1 \
+	git diff --quiet --cached --find-copies-harder --no-ext-diff $tree
+'
+
 # In the tree, there is only path0/COPYING.  In the cache, path0 and
 # path1 both have COPYING and the latter is a copy of path0/COPYING.
 # However when we say we care only about path1, we should just see
-- 
2.51.2